Aim To Only Sweat the Stuff You Can Control

I try to be easy-going and not let things bother me.  Oh, problems arise daily, but most of them just require some creative thinking and/or old fashioned hard work and before you know it, the issue at hand is resolved.  I wish that was true of all problems.  We all have issues in our lives that we've prayed about for years that seem no closer to resolution than when they first occurred.  I'm talking about things that no matter how hard you work, no matter how you try to communicate, you're still at a log jam.  I cannot worry or lose sleep over things like this.  It's not that they don't bother me (they do!), it's that I trust in God.  He's told us to lay our burdens at His feet and that's what I'll do.

That being said, I want to discuss with you a couple of things that grind my gears.  The first is a local issue and the second, more of a national issue.  First the local:  We have a ditch that runs across the front of our property.  Although it is a lot of work, I weed eat the ditch twice a month.  We purchased some plastic signs and stenciled the words "NO SPRAY" and stuck them in the ground alongside the ditch.

The photo above and especially the photo below evidences the fact that the parish road crew (in Louisiana they are called Police Jury) ignored our signs and sprayed right over the signs that say NO SPRAY.  Can you see the yellowing and dead grass?  Perhaps they can't read?  More likely, they don't care.  They overspray the ditches and spray directly into the yard, killing St. Augustine grass.  The spray they are using is some type of Round Up (glyphosate) that kills all grasses except for bermudagrass.  It burns everything down to the ground, and we don't want that on our property.

Why?  There are at least a couple reasons why we don't want them spraying their herbicide on our land.  First, the herbicide kills all the grasses providing groundcover, leaving the soil exposed.  When the rains come, and they do (In July we had over 10 inches of rain!), the barren soil is washed down into the ditch.  The roots of the grass that once grew here and held the soil together are gone.  This topsoil runs into the ditch and before you know it, the ditches are stopped up with soil and so the parish police jury comes around with dump trucks and track hoes and scoops up the dirt (MY DIRT) out of the ditch and carries my soil away!  ARGGHH...

The second reason we don't want them spraying can be seen right over the pasture fence.  Our cows, goats, and chickens eat all that grass.  We milk the cows and goats and our chickens lay eggs and we consume all that daily.  We don't want our food contaminated with poison.  Furthermore, if you look in the distance right between the t-posts, you'll see our four bee boxes full of bees making us honey.  I'd rather not have Round Up-flavored honey.  I have a suspicion that some of what is being called "colony collapse" is due to pesticides and herbicides being used indiscriminately.  

A second issue that grinds my gears is more national in nature.  I haven't flown in an airplane in more than 15 years.  After 9/11 and the implementation of the Patriot Act (which I originally supported "to keep us safe" but now vehemently oppose) travelling became such a pain.  Full body cavity searches, taking off your shoes, x-raying all your belongings, getting to the airport 2 hours early?  All that just takes the joy out of flying.  Make no mistake, the radical Islamists won.  We've just chosen to enjoy being local and not traveling but by vehicle and staying close to home.

Well, we dried up the cows and got invited to go with some friends to a western state.  We'll have to fly to get there and of course, my passport expired back in 2018.  Our state did not require the "real ID" until recently.  I realized that I needed to get a new passport.  Well, it takes four weeks to get a passport!  I have my old passport, my birth certificate, my driver's license.  How in the world does it take four weeks?  It's because there is no competition.  It is a monopoly.  There's no other game in town.  The paperwork below actually states, "Your application may not be in process until two weeks after you apply."

The cherry on top, though, is that I am a citizen of this country and have to pay over $100 and fill out forms, take pictures, go through security at the court house to get 'papers' to travel between states within my own country.  And yet, the back door of the country is left wide open and millions of  non-citizens flood through with no papers, passports, no fees to pay, no hassles and are then free to disperse across our country at will.  We live in an upside down world!  

Injustice.  This fallen world is full of injustice.  It's not a new thing, but that doesn't make it easier to swallow.  I guess at the end of the day, it's best to only sweat the stuff you can control.  And the rest?  Leave them in the hands of the Lord who created all and is in control of all.