The Greenest Grass

Today as I pulled the weeds in the front yard, as usual, I did a lot of thinking.

Recently the question of who you would talk to if you could choose anyone living or dead came upon a Facebook post.

Unlike many people, I didn't even consider Jesus as a response. Perhaps a sad statement about my faith, but  what would he tell me that he didn't tell the guys he hung out with for years?

Nope, I instantly thought of my Grandfather.

He told me a lot of things as a kid, the depth of which I could not have fathomed without the benefit of life experience.

He was a simple man, a grounds keeper for a cemetery that he and my grandmother are buried in. Like many of the people whose lives the world least regards, his life exemplified many of the truths and principles that make a life in this world worth regarding.

There is a certain depth of understanding spiritual truths, that a complicated person with a complicated life will simply never grasp. They don't afford themselves the luxury of just being.

I loved working with my grandfather in his yard, which might be the reason I enjoy working and thinking in the yard now. Today I though about him, and all the times he told me the importance of pulling weeds by their roots.

As I pulled the weeds from my own yard, I noticed that my yard gradually went from a luscious continuous green to a mostly green yard with brown patches. It was a bit of a bummer.

It certainly would have been easier on my back and hands, as well as far less time consuming to simply mow over them. My yard would have looked much better in the end that's for sure, at least for a little while.

I suppose if my only concern were for appearances, rather than a healthy lawn, I could have gone that route. But weeds have thorns, and eventually they have a way of choking out the other life in the yard. I was tired from my usual long work week. As much as much I really didn't want to, I knew I'd have to deal with them at some point, and sooner would be better than later.

I'm not really a big fan of yard work, but I've found that a lot of my thinking comes simply by picking up a tool, and setting to work.

As I continued to think about the benefit of life experiences, it lead to the awareness of a couple of things:

1) Doing what we don't want to do now is often the preparation that enables us to do what we actually want to do later.
2) That as the years go on, the consideration of my own thoughts and feelings are a decreasing factor in those things which I do and do not do. This is especially true with regard to those people I care about, and for.

As the yard gradually became more brown than green, I looked at my neighbor's lovey yard. I though of the expression regarding the greenness of ones own lawn in contrast to that of others'. I began to consider that the greater greenness of another's lawn from a distance might only appear so because they have chosen to mow over their weeds instead of taking the time to remove them at their root and that they might look much different when viewed more closely.

A good looking but unhealthy approach that many of us take in our own lives. It is far easier to ignore the weeds of our lives than it is to get our hands dirty and deal with them at their root. Most of us, if we could afford to would rather pay someone else to deal with those problems. I know a guy who makes his whole living that way.

I'm pretty sure my grandfather didn't mean all that at the time, I can't say, but that's where it took me.

I suppose, like going back in time to talk to Jesus, I can't imagine what my grandparents would say. Honestly what they would have to say to me wouldn't be the purpose behind wanting to see them.

If I could see them again my only real desire in doing so would be to thank them for all they had done for me and taught me in my younger days. To tell them that their presence in my past has made all the difference in my future. To perhaps tell them I loved them more than I had ever realized, and simply hug them one last time.

Death.

It is a milestone we'll all face at one point or another, regardless of how we've lived, or how ever have or haven't prepared for it. We know that having been given life also means we have been sentenced to death as well. Even though we all know it, death still has a certain unexpected way of profoundly impacting us. For a good number of reasons I suppose.

When someone close to us leaves us, they take with them an irreplaceable part of us as well. It is a painful experience.

When I think about the loss someone else may be experiencing, I always think back to the loss of my own grandparents in relating.

Recently, sadly, I had such occasion.

For some reason people (me too) try to put on a brave face in these difficult times, but I know from experience that the game face will inevitably come off at one point or another.

It never happens when we expect that it should...

As it has with me, it might happen when we are alone and left to our own thoughts, or perhaps when one day we stumble across some (otherwise insignificant) piece of something that to us suddenly conjures up the fondness of their memory and solidifies their absence from us ever more in this life. This is when the pain floods into and out of us.

In times like these though I also think of Jesus, that he too wept at the loss of a family's loved one. He didn't weep for the one who gone on, but for the ones they had left behind.

So it's ok to cry.
Even Jesus did that.

My grandparents didn't pass away last year, or last decade, they passed almost three decades ago and the sting still of their absence hasn't left me yet.

There are certain things we just don't get over, things that will hurt a lifetime I imagine. All I really know is they haven't stopped yet, and I don't see them stopping soon.

While it's true that the frequency of our thoughts regarding them may decrease as time passes, the intensity of those feelings never seems to. Not for me at least, not yet.

So for my friends, the Bertrams, I'm sorry. Truly I am.

I don't care what they say love, real love, isn't free, and this is only part of its huge price. It hurts sometimes and sometimes it hurts for a very long time.
That it isn't easy however doesn't mean at all that it's bad, it only means that it isn't easy. One is not the other and for the believer, there isn't bad, there is only difficult and less difficult, but it is all good.

When I consider my own death as I too often do, it really isn't my death that concerns me all that much. My truest concern is for those I will leave behind I'm doing so.

The thought that one day they will look for me, they will want to turn to me, ask me for something, maybe just smile at me and not by my choice I simply won't be there. THAT is what hurts me deeply, to the core.

In my mid thirties I wrestled with this though over and over. It is a thought that has brought me to tears more than once.

But God has a way of speaking to us in a voice unique to each off us. It sounds to us like as it needs it to at the time of our need to best address our needs.

He spoke quite clearly to me twice during this period. (That's a story for another time.) Although the thoughts still linger, there is at least a peace about them now as well. I rest easier knowing that God will provide for them, just as he is and has always provided for me and my family...

Abrupt ending with no real summary. Poor writing I know.

But that's it, all I had to say.

Honestly, I'm not sure why I told you all this. It's probably more than you needed. Maybe it will be just what you needed. Whatever it is to you, I hope it helps you, now or at some point.

Solo Cristo Salva.

d(-_-)b