tomato plants

I had to call and interrupt my logger daddy’s work the other day to tell him he got on Moody radio. Well, sort of.

The Harris twins were on FamilyLife Today talking about their book Do Hard Things (read my review here) and raising teenagers:

…parents need to have the wisdom to say that, you know, “We raise our children, we do shelter them, we do protect them,” but it’s just like when you raise, you know, a tomato plant. You start it in the greenhouse, but if you leave it in the greenhouse, you’re going to get greenhouse tomatoes. You need to know when it’s time, you know, when the roots have been established and you can move it onto the field to bear its fruit in the field.
-Brett Harris from a familylife.com transcript

I told my dad, “They used your tomato plant illustration on FamilyLife Today!”

My dad likes to say that a child is like a tomato plant. In the same way that a gardener keeps a tomato plant in a greenhouse, to protect it from the harsh frost and hot sunshine, homeschooling parents are keeping their children in the “greenhouse” of the home, to protect them from the negative peer influences, while they establish their roots in faith and family.
-“Homegrown Education” from ylcf.org

No, they didn’t exactly quote my daddy, logger, homeschooling father of four. It’s not like he’s copyrighted tomato plants or anything. I’m sure the Harris twins know enough about gardening to come up with that illustration on their own. But since my dad has been frustrated by some rather derogatory comments about homeschooling from the FamilyLife hosts through the past few years, I knew he’d be glad to hear his point made on their program.

My conversation with Daddy soon shifted to politics, our garden, and how it almost frosted here on the farm last night. Hands-on experience with hundreds of tomato plants these past few years could easily provide a few more “tomatoey” illustrations.

Like the way the plants grow with the sunshine but need shade to make the fruit ripen. And the dozens of little suckers that have to be pruned, so that the plant doesn’t branch out so far it is unable to produce much fruit.

And don’t tell the Harris twins, but people come from miles around to buy our “greenhouse tomatoes.” The key is that our tomato plants are grown in the dirt. They aren’t hydroponic tomatoes (rooted in water) nor the dreaded “DNA tomatoes” a customer referred to yesterday (I think he meant genetically modified, and our tomatoes aren’t that either). We open the doors and sides of the greenhouse to let our plants see the sunshine and wind. But the fact that we protect them from the harsh cold is the only reason we have tomatoes to sell when no one else’s are ripe yet, and when everybody else’s garden has turned brown from frost.

Maybe the illustration for our lives is that while we are in the world, we are not to be of it. Just because I’m an adult now, in my own home, with my roots firmly established, does not mean I should expose myself to everything that’s available in the media of television, internet, and music. As a Christian I am to guard my heart and mind. And in this world, that often involves a full-time “greenhouse effect.”

But that’s what Do Hard Things is all about. Rebelling against the norm might mean throwing out the television for some. For others, it might mean staying home from that party or respecting your parents’ decision to educate you at home.

When my parents began homeschooling me twenty-some years ago, they got a lot of encouragement from seminars by the twins’ dad, Gregg Harris. I’m sure Alex and Brett would agree that “Do Hard Things” was not their own idea. It grew out of the way they were brought up.

“The Rebelution” is not just for teenagers. It’s for parents, too. Raising our children to raise the bar in life, do the hard things, and produce beautiful fruit in a hostile climate. Just like tomato plants. Just like my parents did.

Thanks, Dad and Mom, for raising us like tomato plants.