Lawn care

What an exciting time. My heart, mind and soul are all keyed up – dragging my body along. I’ve caught some crud and just pray it doesn’t slide into my lungs again. It’s simply frustrating, and I know it affects my mood. And so often, even in knowing this, I’ll allow my mind to turn in on itself. From this place I’m looking through my memories of the last week in light of my own discipleship. I often find myself on the receiving end of the question, “So what’s God doing in your life?” As I recall at this moment, I more often speak about what God is doing in the people around me rather than what is going on in my own heart. I’ll speak about my family (mostly my sister), folks at work, my discipleship group, the mission and the folks from church. I do enjoy the wonder of all that God is doing around me now that I’ve come to notice it.

Last Wednesday evening a few people from the discipleship groups came down to the mission for the chapel service and to serve dinner. My friends Fredrick and Kim led the worship time, and Kevin gave a wonderful testimony that included both visual aids and audience participation. It was really great. The Spirit was alive and moving. At one point I looked across the dining hall and saw a number of the servants from our church actually engaged one-on-one with the mission guests – starting, in some fashion, a genuine conversation. I do love our church. I had the pleasure of eating dinner with the men in the New Life Program earlier in the evening to continue old conversations and start a few new ones. But I must confess, the icing on the cake was getting to teach Zoe how to pull my finger to get a funny noise. Now that’s fun. We’ll be back as a church the last week in August, and I can only pray that it is in the same spirit.

It is not a straight line from this fine evening back to a poorly lit bar in the Duke City of Albuquerque. There really isn’t any line at all. There is Jesus. First Him, and eventually those after him that God had me meet, so that we could finally say ‘hello’. I’ve stopped trying to draw a line through that transformation. Rather, I simply try to look forward and see what’s ahead. I’m slowing coming to believe that it isn’t that the pace of life is so much faster now, but that the piece I’m living in is just that much bigger and brighter. And looking forward, I’m quite sure I won’t be using one of my old road maps to find the way.

Last night I cut my first residential lawn since I’ve returned to California. I remembered when I was younger and spent my summers up this way as a child. My job was to run a ‘poop patrol’ in front of my Uncle Pete and the lawn mower. I tried my best not to let any slip by, but now and again…So like I was saying, I just started cutting my own lawn.