At a witness course I've been visiting, we had to read a story called My Heart Christ's home, I encourage you to read it too. But this post is based on that book.
My yard was so overgrown. The dandelions just started to come out, which made the grass look even worse. Picture a green blob of dark and yellow-ish green patches, with dandelions and some spots of dead grass. That was our yard. Now, it's pretty hard to hide something like that. The neighbors probably drove by and wondered, wow this guy is lazy, how could he let the grass grow so long and get so bad? How could he ignore this beaming problem in his life? And I decided enough's enough, I'm done arguing about who's job it is to mow the lawn, I'm going to do it and make it look nice. I've learned some things from mowing the lawn:
1. The gate/vet/mulcher thing gets clogged...a lot.
The little gate thing on the right side of the push mower is troublesome. When I'm going through and mowing the lawn it likes to fall off....and then get clogged. Or it just stays on and gets clogged. I was so frustrated, how can this stupid little piece of plastic get so full of grass? Did I forget to mention that the lawn mower will just shut off if it gets clogged? Because...it does. And then I remembered, oh yeah, I haven't mowed the lawn in awhile. So, I decided that I had to keep going otherwise it would just get worse. So, I had to go pretty slow, only mow the lawn in one direction for awhile, and continually watch the gate to see if it was clogged. I had to pay attention to it.
2. You never know what you'll find down there.
The grass had gotten so long that I could no longer see what might be in the grass. There are these baby bunnies in my backyard, and I was scared for their lives, but thankfully none were injured. However, I DID come across many of my dog's surprises buried in the overgrowth, mulch, and other little things that make it grosser to mow the lawn. I felt disgusting after mowing, because remember how that little gate got clogged? I had to reach down and pull the wads that got stuck down there, sometimes without the benefit of knowing what those wads contained.
3. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I was patient, mowed the lawn, and got through this horrible mess of a yard. However, I will have to do it again. At LEAST once a week...:(. One of my pet peeves is yard work, it's never done! Grass is always growing, and in one week's time is back to the exact same height that it was before I mowed it the last time. So, I will have to do this more often, otherwise it'll get overgrown AGAIN and...we wouldn't want that.
4. You need fuel.
During this strenuous process, I had to refill my lawnmower twice with gas. We only own 1/4 of an acre...so the only reason I could come up with for the fuel shortage was the fact that it took more to cut down the 6 or more inches of grass. We need to fill up our tanks sometimes more than we do normally, especially if we are doing such a big job as this.
5. We can't do it without the lawn mower.
Wouldn't it be stupid if we tried to cut our grass without a lawn mower?
Mom: Ben can you mow the lawn today?
Me: Sure! Just let me get my scissors and I'll get right to it!
No way....that would pretty much be impossible. The only way to do it is with the lawn mower...no substitutes.
I don't know if you caught it, but I'll ruin the metaphor for you if you didn't. Once you've read through this post, read through it again, but apply it to your spiritual life. Don't make fun of my long grass...look at how your yard needs to be fixed.
