Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Hard things...

So, I was in my laundry room this afternoon when I had a great blog idea...so great that I forgot it, sad face. But have no fear!  I have something else that is equally as great!!

As many may or may not know, last year my best friend and I (along with her husband, our kids, and all willing volunteers!) decided to put grass into our backyards.  It was a great adventure, filled with memories of hard work being paid off with beautiful yards to look at for the rest of the summer.  As summer has quickly approached us (I say 'summer' loosely as it really still is spring, but how can it be spring when it's 80* outside?!!) I realized that my yard was in desperate need of attention.  The front was easy: Rake the dead stuff out of the small landscape, spread weed-n-feed, and water like crazy...raking and weed-n-feed done in a day.  The back has taken me two days of raking and spreading weed-n-feed and I'm still not done!  I could easily get frustrated at the task taking so long, yet it is so much bigger than the front and I'm learning a lot...about myself, life, and yard work.

As I was raking for the second day this morning I found myself grumbling inside my head.  You know the type I'm talking about...the type of grumbling that we don't do aloud because "good Christians" don't grumble or complain, haha!  It went something like this, "Why am I raking?!" "Who can I pay to do this??" (I wouldn't really do that, but I cannot say that the thought didn't cross my mind!) and "Why is this so hard??!!" At the last thought I felt this thought cross my heart, not my mind, "I want my kids to look at me at the end of my life and say, 'My mom wasn't afraid to do the necessary hard things in her life to get things done.' "  WOW.  That spoke so much to me, so much that I quit my quiet grumbles and continued raking because now I had a new mission!

My mission was now to show my children, who had told me earlier that they were watching me, that I am not afraid to do the hard things in life.  And not just yard work.  I want them to know that I am not afraid to do the hard things like raising them alone for these last few years (and who knows how many more), like facing the ugly in my life that most would shrug off and not deal with, or dealing with the issues in my past that, again, most would just let lie 'under the rug' so-to-speak.

God showed me long ago that He never promised an easy road for His children, but rather that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30).  This has been proven in my life time and time again, and He has never left me when the going got rough.  In this season of my life things are not always easy, I'm going through things that are painful, but through that pain beauty will be found.  After all, raking and getting the dead things out of our lives will produce beauty that's just dying to get out...kind of like the yard full of dead grass - once it's gone the new growth beneath will have a chance to thrive....

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