a sunny epiphany

I just got done mowing the lawn on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning here in Oregon and I had an epiphany.

It wasn’t the kind of epiphany where you come up with a revolutionary way of mowing the lawn using only brain waves. What good would that be to me anyway? I couldn’t produce enough juice to turn the contraption on, let alone cut the whole lawn.

It wasn’t the kind of epiphany where you come up with some fresh new idea for turning recycled grass into a food source to solve world hunger. Although I could see a great ad campaign, “Save the Grass…Save the World” with Chuck Heston screaming into the camera at the end, “Soylent Green is GRASS!”

This epiphany is so simple it hit me right between the eyes. My epiphany?

I’m just mowing weeds!



There, I said it! I know in and of itself it’s not all that “epiphany-worthy,” but it was ground breaking to me. I’ve been mowing only weeds every summer for a couple of decades now, and I know there are solutions. Many solutions. Aisles and aisles of solutions. I’m sure the guy down the street with the golf course for a lawn could school me on the finer points of greening up my “brown thumb.” It really shouldn’t be that hard. It rains a lot in Oregon. I mean…A LOT!

So I started thinking (something I don’t do that often because it hurts my head)…Why is my lawn so green and beautiful in the winter when it’s all stormy and I don’t feel like laying out in it? And why, in the summer, does all the grass die but the weeds become a thick jungle of raging thorns?

I know the answer is simple. I told you it was simple. I am a simpleton.

When it’s nice and beautiful outside, life is easy, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping. The weeds gang up on the grass and rule the yard. When it’s gloomy and rainy and drippy, the weeds die and the grass flourishes.

I’ve found this to be true in my life too. When things are easy…life is comfortable…the bills all get paid on time…relationships are smooth…

…the weeds start to grow.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not Winnie the Pooh’s donkey buddy trying to manufacture pain and suffering in my life. It’s just that I’ve noticed, when storms hit my life, the rain falls in buckets, when things aren’t so easy…I begin to really grow. To me that is the simple answer to the age-old question: “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”

He wants us to grow.

He wants to be able to show us off to the passersby like a plush, succulent green lawn. He wants to be able to enjoy walking barefooted all over us…Okay, well the analogy kind of breaks down there, but you understand what I’m saying.

I think that’s why in the Bible it says, “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” (James 1:2-4)

I don’t know about you, but that kind of gives me a new perspective on facing the torrents of rain in my life. Instead of whining and wallowing and “why me-ing,” I should just let it soak me to the skin. Instead of fuming and formulating and fighting, I should just pull a Gene Kelly and splash around in it.

Now, where did I put that fertilizer? It was just here…a few years ago!