LAWN CUTTING DAY!!! God Is With Me

LAWN CUTTING DAY!

Tomorrow, Thursday, is Lawn Cutting Day. Sure, most cut their lawns on the weekend, but since I have been able to retire, I cut the lawn on Thursday, hoping to get it in the trash for pick up on Friday. It’s no small task-Lawn Cutting Day, or LCD for those of us making up the name. I change from sneakers to boots, cancel my bike ride, finding my ear buds for music- there’s a lot of prepping for it.

Where I live-in the desert, winter doesn’t snow here, unless it’s a zombie apocalypse but the grass dies so I have, since my youth, been planting a ‘winter lawn.’ That is where you throw down rye grass seed and it grows in the cold. Bingo, a green lawn in the winter!

The fact is, it starts off okay, but then fades in January when it does get close to freezing. When it really goes nuts in now, in the spring. I am cutting my lawn twice this week. And it’s that wet kind of grass when you cut it. Forms like a paste under your mower and after a while it comes out in clumps, especially if it goes too long between cuts. Which is why I wear boots, just the cheap hiking boots. Grass stains on those rather than my new Asics. My hands turn green from picking up the clumps of grass, like I’m wearing green gloves.

Most of the time I edge it, sometimes I don’t, but most of the time I do. It makes me feel bad, like I’m cheating at a game I myself, created, if I don’t edge. That’s another thing I forgot I have to prep for. Making sure the edger is charged and has that plastic wire stuff to cut with.

Same way every week

Summer lawn mowing is, I imagine, similar to Lawrence of Arabia in, well, Arabia-hot. I try to do the lawn in the afternoon. ‘Why the hottest part of the day?’ you rightfully ask. Because that’s the way I always have done it. I cut one side in a left to right rotation and the back yard, since it’s in pieces, I cut back and forth. Same way every week, since the dawn of man. It’s funny how much of a habit I can get in to. Not just with lawn cutting, but just waking up. Every day, same pattern-bathroom stop, make my bed, get dressed, start the coffee, change the dogs’ water, light some candles for light, open the curtains, get the paper (yes, I still get the paper), put out the flag. And so it goes.

I can do the same with all elements in my life, I have found. Including God. I can make him a habit in a list of patterned tasks. Sunday, arrive at church late, sit in the back row, in the corner. I use to sit up front, the very front. But then I got in a habit of arriving late, after the music. We play lots of music at our church. Its what drew our family in. Why would I want to arrive after the very thing which made the first visit a string of years of ownership? If I thought about it, I could come up with an answer. And it has nothing to do with Abba. My Dad hasn’t moved. He hasn’t pulled away.

I have.

I could blame myself

Blaming life and busy schedules, but those are just lame excuses. Like crawling out of a house window and getting caught by the police carrying the neighbor’s 47-inch Vizio smart TV an telling the arriving police ‘Where did I get this TV? The one I’m carrying? I found it.”

God still hasn’t moved.

He is right there, next to me. He doesn’t leave but sometimes he grows quiet, waiting for me to decide if I am going to have faith in Him.

I have lived too long and seen too much to deny Him, a witness to Him and His existence. I can and have gotten tired of God in my past. Habits and life have, at times, worn away at my edges and caused me to seek peace and calm elsewhere. Only to be turned back because that peace and calm didn’t last and, in many cases, didn’t really exist.

I have to make a conscious decision, sometimes, to listen for Him or even just to seek Him.

He bought me

God never has to make a decision about seeking me. He did that at the cross.

Enjoy your day.