my pseudo-elizabethan garden
I finished my first mowing of the spring season the other day. I am very happy that the green grass is back and growing!
The hard thing about the first mowing is figuring out just how to go about it. After the long winter, the guidelines that were well-worn into the grass by the end of summer are all gone. It is like starting from scratch.
Life can be kind of like the first mowing can’t it? I mean, one minute everything is going along at its pretty pace and then suddenly a winter of an interruption moves into place and before you know it all your neatly organized systems of living, all your patterns, your regimens are broken.
In the middle of the interruptions we keep wishing for things to get back to normal.
The child is sick and we say “When the sickness is over and he’s well again we’ll get things back to normal.”
In the midst of the bankruptcy we keep reminding ourselves “It will all be back to normal soon.”
But when all is said and done and the chilly trial is coming to its glad conclusion what I have discovered is that what I once considered normal has disappeared. The lines of normal which once seemed so clearly etched into the lawn of my life have up and gone. It seems that just when I am all set for normal to return what was normal has ceased to exist.
As I started up my mower the other day I quickly realized my dilemma. I couldn’t see the old lines I used to follow and I had forgotten where they were. You would think after a hundred times mowing the lawn it would be simple to just pick up where I’d left off, but something had changed over the winter. I burned some brush opening new areas of lawn. The snow plows had chopped up another section. A branch fell here. Some new seedlings I wanted to keep had sprouted in odd locations there. My old methods didn’t fit anymore.
Maybe you have been through a trial. Maybe life has changed unexpectedly and now you are finding what used to be normal no longer fits. What’s a body to do?
1. Let go of old patterns that no longer fit. Nothing stays the same forever except God. Come to it that He is the only One who is the same yesterday, today and forever.
2. Embrace the opportunity to try something new. What was normal no longer is but God can bless the new patterns of your life as much as He blessed the last maybe even more so.
3. Give yourself a break as you begin to change. As I was mowing the new pattern into my lawn I realized that some of the new things I was trying to get the lawn done were not working or looking so good. That’s OK. It is only the first mowing. I have a whole summer ahead to get it right and so do you!
