Category: Asperger’s Syndrome

I love deep, saturated, shiny jewel tones. I guess it’s obvious that I grew up in the ’80s!

So a decade or so ago when I discovered vinca, I was in love! The smooth, gleaming, dark green leaves look expertly tailored and classy no matter the season. Early spring brings equally perfect looking violet flowers that come, then disappear with no messy pile of dead petals to clean up.

Vinca loves sun and shade and flourishes in the clay soil that covers our yard. It also seems to tolerate heat and dry soil pretty well, too. Sometimes it gets a little wilted looking in the heat of a July day, but perks right up once the sun goes down or after a bit of watering.

I started with vinca in the back yard around our deck. Very little sun reaches that area and after years of trying other plants, with very little success, vinca was the answer to my prayers. It spreads quickly and grows so densely that it is difficult for weeds to get a foothold. As I mentioned earlier, it always looks perfectly manicured, so it gave the deck the finished, cared for look I was had been trying to achieve.

I then decided to plant some vinca in the garden along the back fence as a way to tamp down on weeds and keep moisture in the soil so that the other plants had a better chance of growing. Finally, when the large pine tree in our front yard had to come down due to old age and needle blight, I decided to plant some vinca again as a ground cover to help the newly created sun garden.

So why I have spent a large part of this spring pulling my beloved vinca out of my front garden?

Not only does the vinca make it difficult for weeds to grow, it also starts choking out just about everything else around it. While that was a good thing around my deck because it is too shady for most things to grow, it is becoming a problem in the front garden where a lot of things could grow if they weren’t being attacked by the beautiful, graceful vinca.

Spending hours carefully untangling and uprooting the vinca from the plants I would like to keep has given me plenty of time to think. And I think that vinca is a lot like a lot of good things in my life that need to be kept in their proper place.

For instance, food is a wonderful thing, but if not kept in its proper place, it can destroy my life through obesity which can lead to diabetes, heart disease and a whole lot of other problems. Food, like the vinca around my deck, is a very important, necessary, beautiful part of my life. But it needs to stay in its proper space.

Thank you, vinca, for the great object lesson!

It’s been going well, but has been quite a chore, literally, to eradicate the once-beloved vinca from my front yard flower bed.

I have been noticing that sometimes I need to attack from soil level, wrapping my fingers around the stems or tunneling under the runners to pull the vines out, roots and all.

But sometimes it is very difficult to tell which stem I want to pull and which I want to leave. There are some clover stems that look similar – I am happy to pull those. But the anemone and creeping jenny I want to keep. And at ground level, all four stems are the same width.

The creeping jenny stems tend to be a little pinker, the vinca a bit greener, the anemone and clover a bit whiter. But the vinca can be surprisingly white or pink at times. The vinca tends to be smooth-stemmed, along with all but the anemone. But sometimes the anemone is surprisingly smooth.

The clover tends to be a bit curly. The vinca, anemone and creeping jenny tend to be straight, but the anemone is still very often curvy and the creeping jenny can curve around, too. The anemone and clover almost always grow up, while both the creeping jenny and vinca usually grow horizontally, but may also send a stem straight up.

So it can be really hard to know what to pull at soil level.

This morning I found that looking down from above often gives the best, most accurate perspective.

Each of the plants’ leaves are very different. So once I spotted the desired leaf, I could run my fingers down the stem and dig the errant plant out.

God’s perspective is higher and therefore wiser than ours. When we can’t make sense of all of the stressors around us, He is more than happy to help us find what needs to stay and what needs to go.

Earlier this week while running errands and driving to and from work every radio show was all about former President Trump’s conviction on 34 felonies.

Long before he was charged with felonies I had decided that I couldn’t vote for him a third time.

The first time I voted for him, I knew it was the right thing to do.

I wasn’t under any allusions that he was a good person. My husband and I had enjoyed watching his TV show, The Apprentice. We saw first hand how ruthless and unforgiving he is. However, I believed that he was what the country needed at the time. God was going to use him for good in spite of himself, and I believe that God did.

However, I wasn’t excited about voting for Trump last election. I had hoped that someone better would step up. I was hoping that people would see past the myth of the good man that Fox been created around Trump. His one term of presidency was necessary, but enough. But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stomach the policies that now-President Joe Biden promised to enact.

Had President Biden stuck with his more measured, center approach to politics that he seemed to have as a senator, I would’ve felt more comfortable with him. But selling out to the most liberal factions (which my husband assured me he wouldn’t do – I didn’t believe my husband because of Biden’s campaigning) was too much for me.

So I voted for Trump a second time. But it literally made me feel ill to do so.

I don’t know yet who I am going to vote for this upcoming election. I made sure to vote in the primary here in Minnesota in hopes of getting a different choice than Trump. I will vote. God placed me here in the United States, so I must vote. But I need to do some more research on who. Last election I voted for Trump because I definitely did not want President Biden. Since that didn’t work, anyway, I am not doing that again.

After listening to all of the news about Trump’s felony convictions, I thought, “Well, I’ve known since The Apprentice that he was trouble, so I guess it was just a matter of time before it caught up to him.”

However, after seeing President Biden’s reaction to the press questioning him about former President Trump’s allegation that Trump is a political prisoner of the Biden administration, I now consider Biden to be more conniving than Trump.

I used to consider Biden to be a good person at heart who sold out to realize his dream of being President, which, I guess doesn’t really make him good at heart, does it? But I thought that maybe he just accidentally got caught up in something bigger than himself. Now I know that the Republicans were not crying, “Wolf!” after all.

I almost want to vote for Trump just to spite Biden. But, I am pretty sure that isn’t the right plan for me. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord.

I want to vote for someone who will truly be good for the United States. Isn’t there anyone who can stand up for right, be compassionate, honest, kind, good?

I realize that none of us are perfect, but America should be able to do better than these two. Knowing who to vote for is going to take some serious prayer, I think!

I have appreciated learning from Christian friends who tend to vote for Democrats. One thing I keep hearing is that they see Republicans as acting like Hitler, who stirred people up to hate others.

That is a problem, a very big problem for those who, like me, claim to follow Jesus and also tend to vote Republican.

The Bible is very clear that Christians are not to hate anyone. We are to love everyone, especially our enemies – those who don’t agree with us and wished we were dead or at the very least wished we would keep our views to ourselves.

Unfortunately, there are Republicans who do hate others – immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, people who aren’t the same skin color as them.

I tend to vote Republican and I work hard, with God’s help, to love all. I want to help both women and children thrive rather than spend those same funds to put the lives of women above the lives of their children.

I want to help immigrants and spend a lot of my own time and money to do so. I believe there should be processes to let people into the United States so that we are not letting in people who plan to harm others, rather than be a supportive member of the community. I would prefer that we let more in, more quickly, through legal channels.

I believe that people, except in very extraordinary circumstances, are healthiest and happiest when they live as the gender that corresponds to the biological sex that they are born with. You can be a tomboy and still be a girl. You can be sensitive and still be a boy. You don’t need to change to be accepted as the unique individual that you are. I also believe that to remain celibate or marry someone of the opposite sex will also bring the greatest happiness.

I have, for several decades, done what the LGBTQ+ community asked: to live and let live. But that strategy is no longer tenable. It has allowed predatory men and boys access to women’s and girls’ private spaces. It has stripped women athletes of scholarships. It has caused children to be irreparably damaged. It has incorrectly scared loving parents into helping their children be harmed.

I am not against anyone. I don’t hate anyone. I am not trying to push my morals onto anyone. I simply cannot stand by and silently watch the death of innocent children, and the harm that comes to the would-be-expectant mothers and fathers. I cannot stand by and watch harm come to women and girls in spaces that are supposed to be safe for them. I cannot watch children harmed by the very people meant to help them.

Hitler preached hate to people Jesus said to love, people like the Jews.

So if any Republican is preaching hate, then, yes, they are beginning to go down the road that Hitler took and need to reexamine what they are about.

Republicans that I am personal friends with do not hate anyone. They simply want everyone to be free to live and love in ways that help others rather than hurt others. And I would guess that Democrats have a similar desire.

So, rather than being Republicans and Democrats, how about we all become friends and neighbors caring for and supporting each other so that we can all live full lives.

I’m thankful that I have friends who tend to vote Democrat who I can learn from and that we love each other, even if we don’t agree on exactly how the government should help people.

So here’s to coming together to bring true compassion, hope and healing to our country!

PS I am not able to love and forgive others who disagree with me without God’s love and forgiveness flowing into and back out of me.