Keep Mowing the Grass; Do the Work

This summer has been a DRRRRRYYYY one here in Kansas. 

We seemed to jump straight from a late-ending winter (hello snowy April and oddly wet cool May) to a hot, humid July in the first week of June. The lush green grass we had been so blessed by in spring, was beginning to quickly gasp and pant for something, anything to quench its thirst.

By the third week of June, the lawn had seemingly stopped growing–something that doesn’t usually happen until about the third or fourth week of July. And by the last week of June and first week of July, despite our efforts to water, the grass began to surrender its color.

We returned from vacation to see this transformation had taken place, as well as to realize there were sprigs of weeds that had sprouted and taken over where the grass had worn thin. Fast forward another week, and these weeds, and some surrounding grass patches, had grown taller than their neighboring dormant grass friends. Our yard looked scraggly and sad, where it had just looked so lush and healthy only a few weeks earlier.

We kept considering we should get out and at least mow the patches that were oddly towering over the others, but we kept not doing it (hello poor air quality and 108-degree heat-indices).

Last Friday, I had the urge to surprise my husband, and became determined to remove mowing the grass from his plate. 

I popped in my earbuds, piped in the worship music from Pandora, and somehow mustered the muscle to get our stubborn mower to start (no small feat, which usually requires the muscle of my husband). In my excited victory, I began the mowing, just before the heat of the day (not my wisest decision).

And, as I mowed, making my careful diagonal sweeps across the lawn, I began to see progress. 

The lawn still looked dry and brown, but it somehow began to look more cared for. It may have been the worship music piping through my ears, giving me rose-colored lenses, but this careful grooming of the lawn, as it were, seemed to bring a new “hope” to the look of the lawn.

Just prior to mowing, the lawn seemed to look uncared for, sporadic, disordered, and sadly neglected. But, now, with the obvious trimming and attention, it seemed to have rhythm and order—it looked cared for and nurtured.

It had become so easy to put off “caring for” or “nurturing” this drying out lawn. It was easy to not want to endure the extreme heat (for noble health-conscious reasons, mind you), and it was easy to begin to think it quite futile to tend to the lawn in this way (especially when only certain portions seemed to actually need trimming).

This is so similar to my own caring and nurturing of my heart in “dry” seasons. I can know in my mind that I still need to tend to my heart in those parched times, and I can know in my mind that “just doing it” will bring great benefit, but somehow I can make a plethora of excuses and it can become so very easy to put it off, or, even worse, to eventually begin to excuse it as futile.

Mowing the lawn wasn’t easy. It was horribly hot, horribly humid, and by the end of the mowing, my head was pounding with every beat of my heart, and I felt a little bit nauseated (yeah, probably the timing of the mowing wasn’t one of my better choices), but the incredible reward of seeing the lawn nurtured and loved, creating order out of disorder, and restoring a sense of visible “hope,” gave me joy.

A few hours after I mowed, the skies opened up and rain saturated the ground. I convinced myself that the lawn seemed to perk up even more. 

Had it become better poised to receive the refreshing rain after having received a careful tending touch? Perhaps.

My heart is no different. When I do the work, and give a careful tending to my heart—allowing the Holy Spirit to examine my heart, to reveal my sin and convict me of it, allowing the Lord to prune the dead parts of my heart and life, so that new life and growth in Him has room—I can better receive the nourishing, refreshing water of His Word in my life. (And, ironically, this is the same Word that will be crucial to the careful tending in conviction and pruning.)

My job is to keep showing up to mow the scraggly grass of my heart, to care for that which is threatening to be choked out by weeds, to be turning brown, dormant, and neglected. 

I need to do the work even when, and especially when, it’s getting more difficult to do and easier to excuse….and I need to do it today and then again tomorrow.