I was not a happy camper this morning.
Yard work was on the agenda.
My nemesis since childhood.
I’m not really much of an outdoor girl.
OK, so not at all.
I prefer not to venture past my front porch unless I have to. And I do mean “have to.”
Like if the house caught fire, for instance. I’m pretty sure I’d have to go out into the yard in that case.
Maybe even barefoot.
Cringe.
But my husband has been working on getting our yard cleaned up, bless him, and he asked for some help weeding. It’s a pretty big yard, and we neglect it at times for various reasons…not the least of which is my aversion to the yard.
But wait, I covered that already.
So yes, help with weeding was definitely a reasonable request.
But it’s not what I wanted to be doing bright and early on a weekday morning. And I was just a little bit irritated with him over it.
No, it didn’t make sense for me to take my aggravation out on my husband.
(But not making sense isn’t unusual where my feelings are concerned.)
I wanted to stew as I weeded. I wanted to fume. I wanted to seethe.
But instead I (somewhat begrudgingly) heeded the still, small voice that urged me to plug in my headphones and crank up the praise music.
And that changed everything.
Not immediately.
But as the first few songs filled my ears and seeped their way into my heart, I noticed that my heart’s scowl had been replaced with a smile. Instead of listening to myself gripe about the task I was so not wanting to complete, I was listening to the voices of God’s people offering praise to Him.
And that made it kind of hard to stay grumpy.
Because rather than dwelling on how rotten my circumstances were, my focus was redirected back to how awesome my God is.
And little by little, my heart joined in the praise flowing to my ears.
Not only that, but once the eyes of my heart were turned back to His face, God was kind enough to initiate an encounter with me as I was there on my knees, filthy and sweating and praising.
His Spirit reminded me of the blessing of His conviction, which enables me to weed out sins that threaten to take over my heart’s soil.
He then led me to humbly acknowledge my responsibility to sow the seeds of God’s Word into the hearts of my children – it’s a sacred and weighty calling.
Meeting with God in the dirt? Praise filling my ears and lessons whispered to my heart?
I do believe that’s the kind of yard work I can get on board with.
