I have a glorious week off ahead of me. So far it's been spent outside and with good books. Everything I missed about living in the country is now flooding back (did it ever really leave? I'll always be a country gal at heart I guess), and I'm filling each second with all the baking and gardening and hiking I can. It's been a dream. I'm loving the simpleness of these last few bits of freedom - before reality hits and I head back to work and then school and then life.
When I'm working outside, dirt under my nails and big spoon in hand (my fix for a trowel... pretty sure my dad has the good trowel stashed away somewhere that I'm too short to reach...) I love how straightforward and methodical everything is. Once I get into a rhythm - "weed this, plant this here, snip this" - everything just sort of happens. Sure, sometimes I get stumped about what to do and how to do it, but there are books and ancient wisdom (ahem, I mean Google) for that. Problem solving is easy when I have all the resources I need and all the time I could ever want to figure things out.
But that's not the way things are when it comes to doing life together and living in community as a family (whatever all that jargon means after it's been beaten to death). I wish the cure for sin was just to stop sinning. I wish the cure for temptation was to just stop being tempted. I wish that less things were left to individual biblical interpretation (am I still allowed to write a Jesus-focused blog if I wear yoga pants??? Should I even be asking that question???). I wish I knew how to put "lukewarm" Christians and "on-fire" Christians into boxes so that grace never allows anybody to grow or stumble and I can keep my bias and my comfortable stereotypes. I wish that I could know the right thing to say to every hurting person I have the privilege of sitting with.
And that's why I need Jesus. Because not everything is going to be black and white. And not every person is going to live up to or exceed my expectations. I can't predict the future and I can't know a person's heart just by looking at what's on the surface. But I can seek. I can place my dependence. I can listen. And you can bet all the fancy trowels in the world that I can always pray about it. I can thank God for his faithfulness in every situation. His goodness and his favour. His never ending grace, and his constant shaping of me and my heart.
I could never in my pride describe working with people as simple or straightforward, or that you merely need to "have the knack for it". It's complicated. I have no idea what I'm doing. But at the end of the day I have to put my eyes on the One who it's all for. So thank goodness I don't have a handle on life like I do on gardening. Thank you Jesus for forcing me to rely, to rest. He's the one my soul must adore. He has overcome the world.
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