Reflections with One Day Left

Hosea 6:1 "Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up."

This has been the resounding verse for the last month. It has been easily the hardest month out here. I mean Evan told me that it only got harder but I guess I just decided to not believe him and be suprised. Most of all I feel emotionally drained, almost like I've lost the ablitity to feel. I'm also spiritually exhausted. and my right hand is dying. But I've got one day left and then I'm heading to Banff to see the family and then home after that. Jesus will be faithful to restore me after this trying season. I've learned alot about how I react in high stress situations and it turns out I've got room to grow in dealing with people.

anyway I'll end this blog with a peom I wrote during probably my losest point spiritually out here.

Staring at the shiny surface
startled at the depth
wondering what lies beneth
longing to see into the darkness
to bring from dark to light
from empty to full
from meaningless to purpose
from death to life

to see the unseen darkness of the soul
to taste my very heart
to have my dark depth brought froth
....and shutter

Will I bury it again
Or let Him bleed for it

Oh that blood would shine over the dark depth of my soul

Heat Wave

These past three days we have had the worse heat wave of the season. [some people figured we were due] but I got a rank sunburn day one, had to quit early day two and today I ran out of steam with forty-five minutes left. Two people quit today, I think because it is so bloody hot. But I'm still warring through it with my planting partner Mushi [who is from Africa and doesn't get hot, and is good at finding bird's nests on our pieces]

This who business has got me thinking of the New Heaven and the New Earth

Rev 20:23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

One assumes then there won't be any terrifing heat but only nice decent heat...something to look foward to.

~CHAD

If it ain't broke don't fix it, but if it is broke...

Sorry about the lapse of blogging. I did, in fact, make it to Alaska. Skagway, Alaska to be exact. There was the most spectacular mountains I have ever seen, massive snow covered peaks coming right out of the ocean. Skagway is a dumpy little town except for one street off the ferry which has the most high class touristy stuff ever. Skagway is were the gold rushers headed to the Klondike landed. and nothing exciting has happened in the last hundred years so their still milking that glory. anyway nice mountains.

Before I started treeplanting I got a email saying that anything I bring along has a good possibility of getting broken. this has turned out to be true.
-bags - shoulder strap blew out the second week, I'm using Evan's spares
-rainshell - the zipper lost it's mind and is lopsidedly in the middle, so I have to pull it over my head and look like a homeless person
-wool sweaters - have holes in random places, looks like I got attacked by rodents
-gaiters - one of the foot straps snapped in half, so I duct tape it to keep it on my foot. That same gaiter now has a sizable rip across it.
-boots - boots a really great except the insoles where junk, that problem gaiter slit the laces and my kick plate chipped
-termarest - no longer holes air. so I start every night on a nice cushion and wake up on the ground
-tent - the zipper has gotten so bad I cut open the screen and am using that as the entrance.

The second law of thermodynamics [part of the curse] aside I am actually doing alot better treeplanting. I got 4th, 3rd, and tied for 2nd last week. Mostly because I found a great planting partner.

Matthew 6:19,20 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal."

This helps to put everything in perspective for me. Even though lots of stuff breaks [I'm sure I've forgotten a few things] the real value is stored in heaven and that spiritual value is of so much more value. In a few verse Jesus will go on the say that one cannot serve both God and money. Which should in theory be an easy choice because money is such a fickle thing to serve because it always disappears.

~CHAD

"Your Much Hairer Than I Remember"

That was the first thing Amber [Evan's soon to be wife] said to me when we got to Whitehorse at 4:30 AM. That's right Whitehorse, like in the Yukon Whitehorse, like brutally far away Whitehorse, like so far north I doesn't get dark until after midnight Whitehorse.

So we have a few day break between spring and summer plant so I tagged along with Evan [my friend/foreman] to Whitehorse. Did you know that 20 hours on a greyhound bus is a horrendously long time? well it is. Nice mountains but really long and hard to sleep in poorly designed seats. But Whitehorse is a really nice city and its all one big adventure because I've never been hear before.

So far the highlight of treeplanting has been Kinuseo Falls. None of the picture on the net do it justice but here is an okay one.

http://www.nbctourism.com/img_user/communities/Kinuseo.jpg

Anyway this a stop along the road on the way home from a brutal day of planting [on 20 cent land] [which means 70 degree angle hills] and it was a long hard day that I did make some money on. So this waterfall was a great reward. and then Evan and I scaled up the sheer rock face five feet from the waterfall just for a challenge. I even brought up the red umbrella that was half way up just to prove that we did do it. it was amazing. The verse that came to mind upon seeing the waterfall in all its magnificence was 'The fool says in his heart "There is no God"' Psalms 14:1.

A Tribute

So today instead of blathering on and on about the high and lows of treeplanting [and I'm not just talking about falling down the steep hills] I'm going to work on fulfulling a commandment and honor my Father

My dad Rocks. He works super hard [I think he is coming off working back to back 80 hour weeks] and honestly I don't think I have ever heard him complain about his job. Ever. I also don't think he has ever asked for a raise or promotion, he just worked really hard and waited for them to come. My dad also is very good at reading peoples personalities and there were many times growing up when my personality got to get refined and edited and improved. It really sucked when it was happening but now out here I see people who have big obvious personality flaws. So I'm thankful for all the work my dad put into me. My dad is also a good friend. He loves me alot and never pushes his way into my life and offen he is the person who is able to best relate to me. He even is able to say 'you can do better than her' about the girl who let me down. Which blew my mind. Anyway my dad is the best one I've seen out there [in real life and on TV] and he is the person I miss the most out here.

~CHAD

The Becoming....

Those of you who know me know that I'm not competitive in anyway. And those of you who really know me know that that's a big lie.

These last free weeks I've been sitting in the bottom third of my crew numbers wise. And I haven't let it bother me, with excuses like 'I'm still learning' and 'I'm competing against myself'. While two days ago something snapped and I just exploded back into highly competitive mode. I was able to funnel my rage into a 1400 tree day even though I ended up working on four different pieces [and one of them was totally done stupidly]. Our veteran said I was on pace for 2000 if I had kept it up. I finished the day tired for third and it was the first day that Evan said he was proud of me as a treeplanter. Which really meant the world to me.

We finished our contract in Prince George and now were on our way to Tumble Ridge. So last night we took Josh's little Jetta and headed in to town to watch hockey at a restaurant and eat nachos. Well lets just say that Jetta's are not designed for brutal logging roads and neither are there spare tires. so two flat tires and a call to a service truck and two lost hub caps and another different flat tire and three hours and alot of cash. we made it to Prince George to watch the hockey game. we got there in time to watch the last five minutes of the third and see them tie it up. so we watched two over time periods and I throughly enjoyed it. But then we had to leave so we didn't have to drive the stupid logging road in the dark. So I didn't find out that Pittsburg won until this morning. ridiculous.

Philippians 4:13 'I can do all things through him who strengthens me.' Even put my mind on hold and treeplant angry all day, even wait hours and hours for slow, lazy people. and for the Glory.

~CHAD

Odds and Ends

I'm from Saskatchewan so you knew it only a matter of time before I talked about the weather. I know it weird but I actually love it when it rains. I find it exciting and invigorating. Evan the foreman hates rain is really depressed by it. I pray for rain, he prays for sun so I think our prayers are canceling each other out and were getting a mix of sun and rain. But sun is aweful, I'm not one of those guys who dreams about going to the Carribean for a two week holiday and calling it 'school' I'm not just not a fan of being hot all the time. And I'm fairly certain that all of the bugs that were in Egypt ended up in Prince George. It is seriously of biblical proportions. And my bug dope that is 28.5 % Deet is just not cutting it, so I'm upgrading to Watkins which has 30% and serves as a treeplanters false functional savior. But really what I hate is the bugs touching my face. I've taken to wearing one bandana on my head to keep my hair back and on my face so the bugs won't touch me. Evan calls me 'the Terrorist' because I look so ridiculous. My epic treeplanter beard is coming in nicely. I definetly tell myself to 'earn your beard' when I feel like going slow. But as usually my mustache doesn't grow at all. So with my over grown hair and boyish beard its almost as though I'm impersonating a Hutterite Rockstar.

I also fall down alot. which is weird because I've always had awesome balance. But put treeplanting bags on me and I drop like a sack of bricks, at least once a day. Yesterday i fell twice in ten steps. awesome.

James 1:2-4 "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

This is a really kicker verse for me. I concluded some time this week that God was angry at me for making me go treeplanting. Then I recieved a spiritual spanking of sorts and am working through some junk in my life that just needs to go. Painful but worth it. Just like being a Christian is harder but better, so much better.

~CHAD

Warning: Scatalogical Content

As I've said before the food here is really good. But this week for some reason it was a little off one night, only I felt it so it was probably just me. Anyway my crew was hanging out around the camp fire like we do every night and writing jokes and I laughing as often do. [I'm unofficially known around camp as 'that guy who laughs really loud'. Big surprise there.] and I wasn't even laughing that hard but for some reason I started puking. Without warning. Five times. And I haven't puked in three years! It was really random and I would have been killing myself laughing if it hadn't been me. And I was fine the next day.

2 Timothy 2:1,6-7
Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus...It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

Here Paul is imploring Timothy to work hard like a farmer so that he might be a good pastor. It is not a hard leap to suggest that to be a good pastor you need to be able to work really hard. My default is not to work really hard, so I'm kind of learning this the slow way. Treeplanting requires alot of drive and some days [ok every second day] I don't have much drive left. I've spent the last two days reworking my technique because 'Evan the Foreman' thought the way I was planting trees was really funny and brutally ineffective. So I'm learning, painfully and slowly. Heres to learning how to be a farmer.

~CHAD

Just like in the Catoons

The last two days we have been planting on a block that has a ton of piles of slash that need to be work around or dug through. I got the honor of having a really steep piece. So it was very frustrating. The expectations are really high and I'm still just learning [slowly] how to plant good trees, sometimes by replanting them, which is even more demoralizing. And not going nearly fast enough to make money. I figured I need to plant 1000 trees a day to make more than I would at TopLine, I did that once this week...

...and while I was digging and hacking through a slash pile I stabbed my shovel in and a stick came up and whacked me in the face. I yelled and sat down and pouted for awhile. It felt just like in the cartoons where the big dumb guy steps on a rack and hits himself in the face. I now have a really nice sized scratch above my right eye.

Treeplanting continues to be one of the hardest thing I've done. Romans 5:3,4 says if we "rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." This hope is not a kind of a 'I really hope it rains tomorrow because I'm tired of getting sunburnt' hope, but a lasting steadfastness and confidence in Jesus that sustains.

~CHAD

Everything is grand except one thing...

There are many factors that I had no control over about treeplanting, like the food, the people I am stuck working and living with, whether I would sleep at night. But actually all of those things are great. The food is awesome, the people are all decent and interesting [we even wrote a treeplanting song last night] and I sleep way better in the bush than at home, weird. But there still remains an X factor, I'm really bad at treeplanting. No seriously and I've been at this for four days. Were suppose to plant tree is a loose grid thats relatively spaced apart. But I get lost and can't find my previous trees. The phrase ' can't see the tree for the forest' now becomes 'I can't see my trees for the shrubs, slash and swamps.' Yea a bit of learning curve, which feels like a learning steeple.

Gen 3:17-19 - cursed is the ground because of you...thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you...By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread.

This has very much new meaning for me. I've never had to be a farmer of sorts before [my offically title is 'agricultural field work - planting tree saplings'] so this is kind of new. Since this is all cursed because of sin, I'm feeling the effects of the sin and the curse in whole new way. Pastor Mark says that the ground is curse and work is hard so that men will know what God feels like when we is dealing with us being obstinate and thorny and generally disagreeable to His holy ideas. Yea.

~CHAD

Looking to the Bush

About two years ago I remember saying that I would never go treeplanting unless I heard an audible voice from God telling me to. And now I'm leaving to go planting in less than 48 hours. How did I get here? well I didn't have the thundering voice from the heavens commanding me to, but I do feel called to be going. My former pastor talks all the time about how treeplanting was one of the most spiritually challenging and rewarding times of his life, not to mention physically and mental challenging. Challenges are good and I don't do enough challenging things in life. And I need a change of scenery, of which this will be a big one. So long story short I feel that God has directed my path to this point and following him to the bush is what I must do.

Also, lots of people would say that they go on big adventures like this to go 'find themselves' which to me is not only over used but lame and largely unproductive. I fully understand that I am totally depraved and a sinful person. So I am not going to 'find' or 'discover' myself, I'm have a fairly good idea of what that looks like. Rather I am going to go and discover the richness, the wonder and the majesty that is Jesus Christ.

The blog url comes from the Foo Fighters song 'Let it Die' and from Romans 8:13. The hope is that Jesus would put to death my sinful desires and devises and that I would let them die.
Romans 8:13 - For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live

Talk to you from the bush.



~CHAD