Last week I wrote about how myself and several childhood friends managed to damage Mr. Rader’s wheat because we made a portion of his crop our personal playground. If you missed that post, you may want to locate it and read through it to get an understanding of our antics and the lessons I could apply to an early childhood memory.  This week, I have another memorable experience–that, looking back, has allowed me to glean wisdom from as well. It seems that growing up across from a farm which was bordered by wild grasses, swamp and a river afforded much to enjoy, discover, and learn from during summer vacations from school.

When Mr. Rader didn’t plant wheat, his fields yielded a crop of beans or sugar beets. The latter–those big brown oddly shaped beets–were a source of curiosity to us kids on a hot summer day as they grew under weeks of sunshine and ample rain. We didn’t know anything about sugar beets. Surely because the word “sugar” was part of their name they would taste great, right? A carefully hidden paring knife from our mom’s kitchen drawer became the perfect tool to begin cutting through the outer layer of skin to get to the yummy insides of what had to be a delectable feast waiting inside that yummy treasure. 

If you’ve ever peeled a sweet potato or a big squash, then you have a bit of an idea of the struggle we had trying to strip away the dirty outer layer of our sugar beet. We couldn’t wait to cut off a chunk of the white insides and begin chewing to our heart’s content. Boy, were we wrong. All that work and the hard white flesh of the beet in our mouths, chewing away, waiting for the “sweet” to kick in never happened. As we threw the mangled beet to the ground, we spit out the remains of chewed “nothingness”, disgusted and disappointed. We frantically tried to reason and understand how sweet sugar came out of something we had encountered as being completely opposite!

Through no actual fault of our own immaturity, our expectations were based on lack of knowledge and false hope.

Psalm 34: 8 says “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him”.

Our vast world offers much to see, experience, and enjoy. Much like Mr. Rader’s field, which was bordered by our road, a swamp to the west, the Saginaw River to the south, where we live has physical borders, too, and as each one of us grows from childhood into becoming an adult, ideally,  emotional and spiritual borders are laid down to establish healthy and wise habits. Living in an imperfect world, one that has been ravaged by the wear and tear of man’s sinful nature, temptations and unhealthy habits surround us. Unless we are taught to seek God, to grow in understanding and wisdom from Him, our lives can and will remain much like an unprocessed sugar beet–bitter, tasteless, disgusting, until properly processed into what we know as pure sugar–a taste that most of us certainly enjoy and has countless uses!

One of my favorite phrases is “things are not always as they appear”. To my 10 year old self, that odd brown root vegetable looked like a source of absolute sugary delight to satisfy a sweet tooth, but actually turned out to be a major disappointment. As I look back on my life–and as you do the same–how many times can we admit we’re being enticed by “something” or “someone” actually leading us to disappointments or hurts?

In Celebrate Recovery, we help men and women face the hardships that come into our lives, whether by personal choice or not. In our 12 step program, we use step number 4 as a tool to pursue healing:  “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”.

Akin to peeling a sugar beet root with a small paring knife, reflecting on our lives and writing down our hurts, either from the result of actions against us, along with how we have harmed others, is hard work pays which pays off when we admit and share our “inventory” with a trusted human being.

Celebrate Recovery is a world wide ministry which has had the privilege of witnessing tremendous results of healing for thousands of people. These people–myself included–have indeed “tasted and seen that the Lord is good” and we now “live in His refuge”. Hurts, habits and hangups have and continue to be released, replaced by confident hope that only God provides by pursuing Him with the reading of scripture and living within healthy boundaries that protect worldly deceptions.