Rotting Potatoes Don't Laugh

I was sitting out back in my white wooden Adirondack chair feeling really sad about some things a couple days ago. I noticed with curiosity a sweet potato plant that had grown out of a pot full of deadness. It was now flourishing.

I also noticed dead leaves on the peonies where I suspect the neighbor's dog/pony 'marked his territory', but that's a different story.

A few weeks prior there were these neglected sweet potatoes in the kitchen. They grew alien limb looking sprouts on them, aliens from the murky waters of Middle Earth or Death Valley or something like that.

I was about to throw them out when Dave suggested I plant them. "They'll probably grow."

So, in as much time as it would have taken to walk out back to throw them in the woods, I cut the ends off them and stuck them in a rich mucky pot of soil where another plant had died. The insides of the potatoes had begun to rot I noticed, so I didn't expect much.

I forgot all about them until weeks later, the other day, when I was sad and struggling, and I saw they had absolutely flourished.

God has a way of using His creation to speak to me, almost like He has purpose for it all. How about that, I say to myself with second level sarcasm (because I know He has purpose it in, I'm just slow to see it sometimes....).

I started thinking about the process of that sweet potato plant growing and I realized some things. First of all, isolation in the dark was a bad thing for the potato and it's a bad thing for me too. Second, sometimes we have to cut into our issues where there is rottenness. It hurts and it stinks. But if we get them into a good environment, the rich soil of truth and love, where there is light to chase away the darkness and water that keeps giving strength, then life comes out of what would have been death.

So, I chose growth and not isolation, not only for the potato but for me, and I'm glad because last night I played Apples to Apples with family and friends and laughed ridiculously loud!

amazing potato photo by shelley lee, for much better photos see www.tmleephotography.blogspot.com!