A Practical Walk

You see this kinda misshapen cucumber? I’m extremely proud of it!

When I transplanted my cucumbers to the raised beds, there was this particular one that didn’t look so good. In fact I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to make it. The scrawny sprout looked like it’d had some damage done to it’s stem. But I half-heartedly gave it some water anyways, what would it hurt? I had to water the two good cucumber plants on either side of it anyways. The two plants on each side grew wildly, leaves springing up and the vines reaching up, out, down, anwyhere they could go! While the guy in the middle just sat there. He wasn’t growing much, but he wasn’t completely withering up either.

After a while I noticed he was growing, it was much slower that his side-by-side comrades, but he grew. And one day, I spotted a teeny-tiny cucumber on him! I couldn’t believe it! I had thought he was a goner, and now he’s actually giving me fruit! This picture is that cucumber! It’s definitely not as beautiful looking as some of my other ones have been, but it’s a cucumber! And I ate it in a salad!

I felt like this was such an analogy. Sometimes with people I tend to think of them like I did with the tiny bent over cucumber sprout. I could’ve easily picked that cucumber plant and tossed it, thinking it wouldn’t ever amount to anything. Sometimes I mentally give up on people. “They’ll just be this way their whole life. It’s no use trying to help,” I think.

But sometimes we’re wrong. I had plenty of other plants that were similar to that cucumber, that didn’t look so good after transplanting, and didn’t make it. In fact not a single one of my eggplants survived, but there was this one cucumber plant that surprised me and did! We never know how someone’s life might change.

And this is just a plant I’m talking about here, if I had given up on it, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. But how much more important are people, and yet I’m quick to want to give up on them. This was a great reminder to me to keep “watering” people in my life, even if they’re growing slower than the others, even if it takes longer to get the fruit, it’s still worth it!