:: basicblog ::

You reap what you sow, karmic retribution, etc.

Ten days after my wife Doris and I moved to VA, we were struck (not us, but our car with us in it...) by a nineteen-year-old uninsured motorist named John Michael Robinson, Jr. on our way home from the Chesapeake Animal Control where we had just adopted, Sam, our dog.

They have some stupid law here in VA where you pay the DMV $500 and you can drive without insurance for one year. That is what this kid had done.

His car, a big, black Chrysler 4-door, sustained no damage, while my car was hit for a total of $2500. Because it's a new car (a 2002 Hyundai Accent) and we are still making payments on it, we are required by the titleholder, Chase Manhattan Bank, to keep full coverage auto insurance on it until our debt is paid off (sometime in 2007, ::sigh::).

At the scene of the accident, the kid wanted me to just let him go. I felt bad for him, but having been in several other accidents this year (none of them our fault, by the way), I refused. He gave me his phone number and told me that he was on disability and his grandmother handled his finances and assured me that she would pay to get my car fixed. I got a police report and informed my insurance company of the accident immediately. I was still going to have to pay a $500 deductible even though the accident was not my fault just because this kid had no insurance.

My insurance company told me that I could try getting the money directly from him, so I called his grandmother. It took me days to get her on the phone. When I finally did, she told me that the kid was an unemployed bum and she was getting ready to "throw his ass out". I felt bad for the kid and decided that I would just "bite the bullet" and pay the $500. My insurance company assured me that if and when they recovered money from the kid they would be sure to reimburse my $500.

Five hundred dollars may not seem like a lot to you, but when you consider it's the third time this year I've had to pay a deductible because of a car accident that wasn't my fault, it adds up! Add to that the fact that I'm unemployed and we spent a lot of money just getting here, and you can understand my reluctance to part with my $500!

Anyway, I was reading the local paper yesterday, The Virginian-Pilot, and came across the following headline:

3 men arrested in raid on suspected drug lab

As I read the article, it became clear to me that one of the men arrested was this same kid who had struck us! He's "charged with the manufacture and conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamines".

I felt an odd mixture of glee and gloom... I was happy that justice had somehow been served in a "big picture" sort of way and sad as I pondered what this kid's life must be like. I mean, he doesn't live with his parents; he lives with his cranky retiree of a grandmother who's getting ready to "throw his ass out".

I wondered about the quality and quantity of the seeds that had been sown into his life and the harvest he was now reaping.

It's funny about seeds... we have absolutely no control in our younger years about what gets sown into our lives. Hopefully, our parents are good "filters" that screen out as many of the "bad seeds" as possible from being sown into the soil of our young hearts. Those seeds take root, grow, and in time produce a harvest: good or bad... just depends on what was planted. And hopefully, as we grow older we develop our own set of healthy boundaries to keep the bad stuff out.

But what if our parents are the ones planting the bad seeds in our lives? What if they themselves are reaping a bad harvest from the seeds sown into their lives and are now in turn sowing bad stuff into our lives? Where does the cycle end? How do you stop it?

As I look at my life, I can see that I am bearing "bad fruit". It's not that I don't bear any good fruit... I just want more of the good and less of the bad fruit in my life.

It's been said that "where there's fruit, there's a root". I want to discover and unearth the "bitter roots" in my life and be set free from the cycle. I never want to sow bad seeds in another's life...

Sometimes I just feel like a hamster in his wheel... spinning, spinning, spinning... running round and round... but getting nowhere.

++Lord Jesus, make the cycle stop!
I want to bear good fruit and reap good harvests.
Please help me to discover the bitter roots in my life
and expose them to Your refining fire.
Purify me that I might bear good fruit,
Fruit that will remain.++

++May John Michael Robinson, Jr. come to know You
and Your healing love in his life.++