We went out to the farm yesterday, as my husband's grandparents were visiting and our kids don't get to see their great-grandparents nearly enough. However, by the end of October, they'll be moving back up here. They are my mother-in-law's parents, but my father-in-law is welcoming them to the farm, and they are having a manufactured home put up across the lane from the farm house. It will be nice to have them closer -- Grandma just turned 85 and Grandpa is a couple years younger, and they are just getting to the point where they need a little extra help in day-to-day things.

I asked my father-in-law about his crops. They got 8.25 inches of rain in three days last week, and at this stage of the game, that could have been bad news. It would have been great in July but the crops are supposed to be drying out now, in preparation for harvest. At one point, my father-in-law's best stand of soybeans was underwater, but he said the ground soaked it up pretty quickly, and he's not worried about losing too much to that. He thinks he'll do okay on corn, too, although he's got a little corn borer damage out there.

A corn borer is a nusiance worm that drills into the corn stalk, causing it to pretty much break off at that point. If the corn borer goes in above the ear, just the top of the stalk breaks off and it doesn't affect harvest. My father-in-law thinks most of his corn borer damage is above the ear like that, but he knows he's lost a little due to lower entry.

I have more to say on all this, but I don't feel like putting on my Wendell Berry hat for the moment. I've got a couple things bothering me this morning. While we were out at the farm, we found out that my brother-in-law's wife is "taking a break" and has left him and their daughter for a couple of weeks "vacation." So their temporary separation continues (she and their little girl have been living with her parents while he has been redoing the wood floors of their recently-purchased house). I'm nervous about it. It's hard to work through your problems when you don't have to face them every day. And I'm getting a vibe that she thinks it will be too hard to stay, although I haven't had the opportunity to speak with her personally.

Also, my mother called and my parents want to come visit next month. They were just here in late June, and we're accustomed to only seeing them once a year for various reasons -- most of them good ones. I'm not sure how to handle the request, and I always hate being in the middle of these things. My husband doesn't want them to come -- neither do I, really, but I wonder if they don't have some reason for wanting to visit again so soon? And I'm feeling a little guilty because I just told them I'm expecting another baby last week. Part of me knows I shouldn't have waited so long -- I was already half-way when I told them. I waited because I was expecting a lot of negative comments like, "It's too soon for another" or "You're too old" or "You are going to abort this one if there is something wrong with it." And then I didn't get any of those comments. Maybe because my mom was too surprised that the baby is due in late January, not March or April like she had anticipated.

So anyway, it's a struggle. I feel the obligation to be hospitable and charitable to them, but I don't want them here. I know I just blogged about this like last week, but I've only grown to the point where I can handle the idea of them being in Heaven, in a perfected state. Interacting with them on earth is still an issue.

Always more room to grow, always more of the "old man" to kill off so I can live for Christ. Ugggggh!

--Sparki