Bumps in the road

I was taught at an early age that if there are too many obstacles between you and your goal, maybe that's not the direction you should be headed. If God wants you to head a certain direction, the path will be cleared. I believe that, but I have trouble distinguishing roadblocks from speed bumps. Is God trying to tell me to stop, or trying to make me work hard enough for something, to make sure I really appreciate the accomplishment?

Jay and I are both working toward dreams right now. His is The Garden, aka Jay's Jellies. Mine is nursing. Or, maybe I should say our dreams are, because we are both equally invested in one another's dreams.

His dream battles against the weather, his time, finances, plant health and now, his health. He's having surgery on Friday for osteomyelitis. For you googlers out there, "acute osteomyelitis of the 4th and 5th metatarsal caused by trauma." When I asked the nurse how long he'll be laid up, the official answer was, "we won't know until we get in there and see how bad it is."

Not only does this make his real job difficult, with state testing coming next week, but it also makes his dream pretty damn hard too. You can't till with crutches. You can't plant 150 pounds of seed potatoes, 1800 onion/leek sets, 350 tomato plants, 250 pepper plants and countless other squashes, beans, eggplant, beets, broccoli, and cauliflower with crutches.

And, being momentarily selfish, you can't take care of 4 girls solo two nights each week so your wife can finish her A&P class. Six weeks left of class, 12 nights. I'm not sure how we're going to pull this one off.

But we've dealt with worse. Hell, we feared worse just with this health episode. We'll settle happily for osteomyelitis. We'll deal with Friday, then the weekend, then next week. Six weeks is such a short time in the big scheme of things.

But I just wish God would send me a big flashing billboard to tell me if these are speed bumps or roadblocks. I never have been good at subtlety.