My Marvelous Saturday
(Some names have been changed for privacy)
At 6:45am the alarm sounded. I slammed the snooze button. After hitting the snooze button several more times, I crawled out of bed and took my first shower of the day. I tend to pray in the shower. Usually it is about what I will be doing that day.
Shortly after 8am I arrived at CFC to help in the computer room. They still call it the sound room, but the sound board is now out on the floor. So, to me, it is a computer room. My wife and children; Elizabeth, Ethan and Daniel, were on vacation with Elizabeth’s mother and father at Massanutten. I had a full day planned for myself. The Virginia chapter of NYI, or Nazarene Youth International, was meeting at CFC for a convention. I had been asked to help run the computers. I did not think I was going to be needed for very long, so I intended to go and help at the Home Makeover: Hope Edition being done by CFC later in the day if I could. I also needed to cut the grass in our badly neglected yard.
I checked in with Mark and Jeremy, (who was really going to be running the show), and then went to look for coffee. On the way to find coffee I spoke to several of the youth from our church as they got ready for the convention. They seemed excited to be there and be involved. This was when I got my first blessing of the day. It almost brought tears to my eyes watching dozens of teenagers come into the sanctuary at CFC. I could really feel the Spirit of God there. For all of the bad stuff we see on the news that kids are getting into, here was a large group that had made a better choice, and we at CFC were able to support that decision in a real way.
After talking to a bunch of people, and drinking several cups of coffee that Brad had made, it became obvious that they would not need me working the computers. Right before things got underway; I slipped out and headed for home. I knew I was going to be changing clothes so that I could work outside, but I had not yet decided if I should try to cut some of my grass before heading over to the Extreme Home Makeover: Hope Edition (EHM) worksite. I checked the weather report and it was calling for rain later in the day so I decided to try to get some of my yard cut.
It was very difficult. It was the tallest we had ever let our grass get. I was praying the whole time I was getting out the gas powered weed eater. I was not praying about anything specific at this point. I was just talking to Jesus.
Then I had the problem that the weed eater kept stalling. It was acting like there was water in the gas, so I dumped out the gas that was in it, and filled it back up. It started working after that. I was running through line rather quickly. Before I could get around the fence in our back yard, I needed more line. When I went around to the front porch for more line, I looked across the street to Ms. P’s house. Her grass was even taller than mine.
Ms. P is a single woman, who I would guess is past 60 years old. At the beginning of spring, one of her sons would occasionally come cut her grass. As the summer came, her grass was not getting cut anymore. My wife Elizabeth and I have been cutting it for her, but we do not believe that she knows it is us. We purposefully mow it when she is at work. Some of the neighbors know that we do this, and know that we do not want Ms. P to know that we do it.
Because of my wonderful wife, we know many of our neighbors and they know us. Several doors away live the Dees. Mr. and Ms. Dee will occasionally bring us zucchini and cucumbers from their garden. They are very nice neighbors and go to a “Church of God.” At least I think that is what it is called. She always wears long dresses. He has Parkinson’s.
Sometimes he is able to speak, and sometimes his voice sounds like he has laryngitis. He shakes a little bit; all of the time. He is able to cut his grass because they bought a riding lawnmower with a sensitive “Kill Switch”. That switch will shut of the engine if he leans up from the seat at all. If he has a shaking spell, or seizure, he can lean up and the whole thing stops. He is also able to walk his shaggy brown dog, Rusty, up and down the street.
I should mention that J P and his family know Ms. P, and James or his parents come and take Ms. P to her church on Sundays. Anyway, back to me and the trimmer, which I finally got wrapped up with string, and adjusted the gas so it would continue running.
It was hot. I was worn out from a hard week. I was praying the whole time, and feeling a little guilty over not going straight to the EHM. I trimmed around the whole yard, and was burning up. I was already tired and it was not even noon. My hands felt a little numb from the vibrations of the weed eater, and I was cranky. I had a blister on my thumb. I wanted to be done. I went and got a drink, constantly praying.
By the time I had finished cutting my yard, it was well past 12 noon. I was hot and tired. My hands hurt and my back hurt. I was hoping that there would not be much hard work left at the EHM site. Then I looked across the street again. I knew that God wanted me to go cut Ms. P’s yard. It did not look like she was home. As I stood in my front yard and looked at hers, I could feel the sweat rolling off of me. My shirt was so soaked with sweat that I could wring it out. My muscles ached. I said, “OK God, I will go and cut her front yard. Please help my lawn mower not stall out.”
I really just wanted to go take a shower and get to the worksite for EHM.
I filled the lawnmower with gas, and headed across the street. Her grass was really tall. In the front yard there were places that were over 12 inches tall. It was very slow and hard work to push, drag, and convince my lawnmower to cut her grass. I was continuing to pray the whole time. I was saying things like “All I really need to do is the front yard. I will mow a path for her in the back, and be done.”
What I was hearing was “Do it right, do it well, do it even better than you did your own yard”. The sweat was rolling off of me. I knew that I should really go over her front yard again when I got done, as there were parts that did not get cut well the first pass. I struggled to get the front done, and then went to cut a path in the back.
The back yard was even taller. Most of it was up to my knees. My lawnmower was pushing it down more than it was cutting. I had to make two passes over everything just in order to cut it. I had to go slow or the lawnmower would stall. I was only cutting half of the lawnmowers width on each pass in order for the grass not to get caught under the mower and stall it. And I like that mower and think it is pretty good. 6.5 horsepower. And it was still stalling out. I was getting cranky, and was going to quit. I had cut her front yard, even if it did not look great, and had cut her a path to her clothes line in the back.
It was at some point during that third pass over part of the path that I was cutting that Pastor Mikes story about buying his son a car came to mind. I started thinking about obedience. I started thinking about being where God wants you to be, and how that is always better than being where you want to be. Sometimes, if we are able to obey without regret, it is the same place. That is when joy comes.
“OK, Lord, I get it. I will finish cutting her back yard also. I will go and run another pass over her front yard. I will stop wishing I could be somewhere else. I submit fully and joyfully.”
And then… I turned around.
Mr. Dee was driving his riding lawnmower in the yard that was between his and Ms. P’s. At first I did not get it. I thought “what is he doing cutting the teachers grass? She just had landscapers there because she does not live there anymore and is selling it. Maybe he does not know.”
He kept coming toward Ms. P’s. He was coming to help. He just waved and started mowing the back yard. I waved back. That was when the neighbor from the other side of Ms. P’s came over and helped me moved one of those large portable basketball goals so we could mow around it.
It was such an immediate and full blessing that I cried. I was sweating so much no one could tell there were tears coming down my face. This was my second blessing of the day.
I went around front to run over it again. When I got done, Mr. Dee had finished the back yard and was heading for home. I went and thanked him. He just said, or at least all I could hear, was “Get ya out of the sun”. He had a warm smile, like most times I have ever seen him. I must have really been sweating I thought. It was his pleasure though. It really was. I am only really getting to understand that many people know that great joy comes from doing things for other people.
When I walked in the house and got a drink of water, I realized how hot I really was. I was sweating a lot, and I had a tunnel vision effect. I was even a little dizzy. I sat down and cooled off for a few minutes, grabbed a cheese sandwich, and got in the shower. The nice cool water of the shower made me feel much better, but I could tell that I had worked hard. My muscles ached.
And I was still planning on going to the EHM site.
So at 3:30 I finally showed up at the Extreme Home Makeover: Hope Edition site. What an amazing thing that has been. It really wowed me when I first saw it. Concrete walk in the back was poured, and the framing for it was gone. The front deck was fantastic. They had even put lattice around the bottom of it. The plants were in, there was mulch being spread, and the painters were touching up some spots. It was fantastic.
It is a great joy and blessing to be involved with Christians doing good things. There are many people that I run into during a normal week that do not have good intentions or have no joy. Being part of Christian men and women working on a project like this taught me many things, and made me very grateful.
I got out of my car with a video camera running to take a few shots of the nearly finished job. Several people said things like “Oh, so now you show up, after three, and with a video camera. Where were you when we were hauling rock?”
I just smiled and asked what I could do to help. I moved a few wheelbarrows full of mulch, and then helped clean up. It seemed a little anticlimactic for the ending of such a project. I thought maybe the few of us that were left when we were packing up should stop and say a prayer or something. They all looked very tired, but joyful. And then I realized that they may have been praying all along, just like me.
A short time later I was at home after another shower eating dinner. I remembered that someone said something about channel 29 being at the EHM: HE site today. I turned on the news, and there it was, third story into the news. It was not a long clip, but it was clear and concise. Pastor Tim looked good on TV and was articulate. I gave thanks to God for allowing me to have such a great day. I also prayed for God to lead me in what I should do for my Sunday school class in the morning.
I look at the material that I had read, and read a little more. All I could think of was getting this day down on paper. So here is our class today, listening to me talk about how great it is to talk to God all day long. To have a conversation with Jesus, all through out the day. To give thanks and get help, all day long.
It brings me great joy to think that other people do also. Do you?
Pray about the Bible.
Read the Bible.
Read about the Bible.
