Monday was our first beautiful, “welcome back Spring!” days, where it was warm enough to let my children go play in the backyard for a couple hours after school.
To my dismay, the patch of dead, yellowed and matted down grass from where my dog peed all winter long (when it’s cold out, she runs straight out to the middle front part of the grass and pees as quickly as she can, then runs back — can’t really blame her cuz I’d do the same if I were her!), seemed at least three times the size as I remember from previous years.
I decided that perhaps this would be the year I do some more significant lawn care — after all I still also had the circle of dirt underneath out trampoline where our dog tore up all the grass and dug holes in the ground to entertain herself in summers past. I also noticed a significant amount of moss in other areas of the lawn, especially around the swing set. It seems moss is a bigger issue than usual in my next door neighbour’s yard as well this year. Not totally sure why, but I have been told it’s a normal phenomenon when the grass becomes thinner/sparser… And apparently, without proper maintenance and re-seeding, grass has a habit of thinning out by default.
Anyhow, I managed to get a hold of the person who has been mowing my lawn every year since we’ve moved into this house, and asked him to come take a look. Luckily, he had time to work on my lawn the next day, as this weekend is supposed to rain a lot, meaning it would be a perfect time to plant grass seed.
What I hadn’t realized, however, was that my entire backyard would end up looking like a big mud swamp, especially after I found time just before it grew too dark to hose down all the areas with grass seed.
As I stood there looking at my muddy mess of a yard, with spring break just around the corner (it starts tomorrow), it dawned on me that now my backyard would basically be out of commission for I’m not sure how long — but most likely at the very least the whole duration of spring break =(
This was my first time actually having any work done on my lawn besides having it mowed, and raking a few small patches here and there to plant some grass seeds as needed…so while I realize this is most likely common sense, it hadn’t really occured to me that it would end up looking (and smelling) like this…
Then the thought came to me that life can be a lot like this…how when we seek to grow, or do some inner healing work, it can look a whole lot messier and even throw parts of our lives/selves out of commission, before we begin to see any fruit of our labour.
It’s kind of like when I used to try to really clean my room, which meant not just throwing everything conveniently into my closet and shutting the door, but taking the time to take everything out of my closet (and drawers) to sort through everything, carefully brushing off and putting back into proper place those things that were still valuable to me, but that had been hidden and covered up by all these other things like trash, junk or just old things that had become irrelevant, taking up space and cluttering up my life.
As much as I have had faith in and seen God’s follow-through in how He has challenged, guided and helped me in my own life to grow and heal, and grow some more, I am optimistic that one day (sooner rather than later I hope!) my lawn will be green again, and not just “green again,” but so much more green than ever before, and the investment I felt compelled to undertake, and the required patience with a muddy mess in the meantime, will pay off beautifully.