What I learned mowing my lawn. In the dark.

This week, I decided to mow my lawn. In the dark. I grabbed my headlamp, headed out the door, and revved that beautifully red rusty machine up at approximately 9:15 PM. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't. All I know is that mowing the lawn brings me peace and clarity, however strange that may be. And after a particularly long week, I knew I needed to sort things out--to center my reality and stop my mind from spiraling wildly towards the point of no return. For some people it's running. Journaling. For me it's mowing. I love it. I don't know why, but it works.

So there I was, blindly making my way through the jungle that had became our backyard and praying to God I wouldn't chop off my feet as I stumbled through the foliage. You never really notice how many particles are in the air until your headlamp highlights all the possible debris you could be ingesting in the dark of the night. It's quite alarming and also sort of surprising to acknowledge that the air you are breathing in isn't exactly clean. It makes me wonder what else in my life is unhealthy that I don't see or choose to pretend is not there. Bad behavioral patterns, comfortably uncomfortable relationships. Things that keep me from being all that I am trying to be. Things that aren't true. It's much easier to inhale and suffer the consequences. Unfortunately the long-term effects usually outweigh the immediate satisfaction.

That air made it hard to mow. You know what else made it hard to mow? The dark. I could see approximately five feet in front of me, and had to rely mostly on my memory map of our yard to make sure that I was actually headed in the right direction. Plus I couldn't be sure that I wasn't actually mowing the same patch of grass over and over again. So I did the best I could. I stuck with what I knew, didn't stray too far from the path, and kept moving forward. And isn't life like that sometimes? We aren't sure what's ahead and we sure as hell don't want to look behind, so all we can do is keep pushing. Keep trying. Keep using all our resources, everything we have, just to pick ourselves up and make it through our day.

We are uncertain. We are afraid. We feel the pull of "not enough" and perhaps the greater tug of "enough already". I'm not cut out for bright and shiny. I can stay about as positive as the next person, but sometimes living is just plain hard. Fact. Our seasons wax and wane, and some are better than others. We cannot be our very best selves year after year. All we can be is our best selves in the moments that are offered to us, and at times that will feel like failure. But if you are trying to mow your lawn in the dark and all you have is a headlamp to light your way, you may as well cut yourself some slack. You can't control the sun or the fact that the grass may look massacred in the morning. You do the best that you can with what you have. And so you keep mowing, praying that the God of the universe is holding your hand in the ultimate game of blind man's buff.

And that's really where we learn to put our trust. I think we fear that God will let go, that we will somehow wander too far for him to ever bring us back again. That we won't be strong when push comes to shove, when it's time to be brave and courageous. That we will be afraid of the dark. And you know what? We probably will be. We are human after all. But here's the thing--God knows how we are when we cannot see. He knows that we are prone to panicking, to doing foolish things in order to maintain control. To doubt. He knows. But that does not make him turn away. Love us less. Shame our actions or ridicule our mess. He sees what we have made in our struggle and gently reminds us that there is grace. And that with that grace comes redemption. So that even when we mow the lawn in the dark, we know that when light hits the horizon we have a chance to make everything new once again. Because here's the thing--the grass will regrow.

And so will we. We are not alone in the dark.

And the sun will always, always rise again.