The Law Of The Farm

The timing of his question couldn’t have been better.

Drug overdoses were on the rise and they began garnering a lot of attention from the public, the media, and the politicians. And with that attention eventually came grant money to fund the investigations into the deaths and the dealers in an effort to stem the tide. When all this was happening I was working in Detectives and had the opportunity to work a number of those cases.

This investigation, in particular, began in a McDonald’s bathroom.

John Doe

Patrol and EMS had initially responded after getting a report of a guy who went into the men’s room and never came out. He had been found in the bathroom stall, seated on the toilet, dead after a lethal dose of heroin. It was a sad state to be found, I’m sure, but unfortunately was not all that uncommon.

A fellow detective and I responded to process the scene, collect evidence, and to help identify this John Doe. Without any identification, cell phone, or other means of figuring out who he was, we took his fingerprints and planned to run them through our system in hopes we could get a positive I.D.

The Question

We set up our fingerprint kit there on the bathroom floor and got started. My partner dusted the guy’s hands with fingerprint powder and held his fingers still while I lifted the prints one by one. And that’s when he posed the question to me.

My partner was crouched down next to the prostrate body of John Doe, holding the powder-blackened fingers of one hand while I was bent over him readying another fingerprint lifter. As I was about to take the next print, my partner looked up at me, paused, and then asked, “You know, when you were a kid, did you ever think you’d grow up and one day be fingerprinting a dead guy on the floor of a McDonald’s bathroom?”

No, no I hadn’t.

When We Grow Up

I think all kids have somewhat of a limitless, idealistic view of whatever it is that they want to be when they grow up — as idealistic as their little minds can conjure. Which is great, and as it should be, because I don’t know what kind of childhood would result in one devoid of imagination and possibility. We’ve probably all had big dreams for our future — of adulthood — of all the things we are going to accomplish. And by that same token I feel fairly certain that John Doe himself had not dreamed that his life would be cut short by a downward spiral of bad choices terminating on a toilet in a McDonald’s bathroom. I doubt that he, as a child, envisioned that kind of an end for himself.

Which got me to thinking.  Isn’t it interesting how our two starkly different paths met in the same place, like the intersection of two divergent paths — I on one and John Doe on the other. How did he end up there and I end up here?

The Law Of The Farm

I believe in the Law of the Farm — that you reap what you sow. This simply means that if you plant corn, then corn will grow. If you plant nothing, you get nothing. If thorns, then thorns. You get the idea. It is a natural law, one that is self-evident. In the same way our hearts and our minds are just like that farmland soil. The soil doesn’t concern itself with what is planted — it doesn’t care if it’s corn or soybeans or beets — the soil is simply the vessel. The same is true of our hearts and our minds, they are simply vessels. They do not discriminate by casting out the bad and keeping the good, or worse, the other way around.  Because of that, what we plant in them matters — whether by design or by default — because whatever it is, that is what will grow.

Making God Laugh

Someone once said that if you want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans — I think that’s pretty funny. Generally speaking there are usually two problems with our plans. One problem is that they involve us, the other is that we think we are in control. I’ve found this to be true when I look back on my life and shake my head at all the perfect plans I had in my head and how they actually turned out.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we ought not to plan or prepare at all; the Bible has plenty to say about that. It’s just that our plans are subject to change by forces outside of our control. It’s how we respond to those changes, those course alterations, that determine where we end up. It’s true that things happen that we don’t want and didn’t plan for. We fail. We make mistakes. People hurt us. We hurt others. But it is what we do with those failures and how we choose to respond that will determine where we end up.

The Road Less Traveled

Picking ourselves up, trying again, changing direction, forgiving and asking for forgiveness are not easy.  Quite the opposite.  That is the road less traveled, the difficult path, the narrow way. Jesus said, “For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13b-14, NKJV) Of course, Jesus was speaking of eternity, but the temporal application is glaring.

So how do we take the narrow road, the road less traveled? Begin by intentionally planting seeds of grace, mercy, discipline, integrity, fortitude, humility, and service through what we read, what we listen to, and who we hang around with. Then begin again. And again.

___________________________

– What are your plans for the future?
– What have you planted in the soil of your mind?
– What weeds need to be pulled?
– What seeds need to be planted?
___________________________

Thanks for reading! Do you have a story that you think we could learn from and that you’d like to share with Johnny Tactical nation? Fill out the contact form and include your name, rank, and department, or email it to [email protected] and follow these guidelines:

• It must be a firsthand account
• True
• Have a lesson, principle, or tactic to apply
• Cleaned of names, dates, and places
• Include your call sign

 

If your story is selected and published in our blog you’ll get the credit using your call sign and we’ll send you a free Johnny Tactical morale patch.