When I told Pastor Debbie that I would be in the Memorial Garden Tuesday morning doing some cleaning, she asked me if I would go ahead and plant the lantana she had bought.
I said sure … as long as she didn’t mind it dying a few days later.
The last thing I had planted was a bean sprout … in fourth grade … for a science project. And I’m pretty sure it wound up in the trash.
But I told her I would give it a try and so, Tuesday morning, I picked a spot next to the arbor and started hacking away at the ground with a trowel.
The ground was sandy, but filled with roots. It was a nightmare to dig through. I wasn’t accomplishing anything other than showering myself repeatedly with dirt, but I kept right on, digging out a hole millimeter by millimeter.
Finally, Pastor Debbie came out to check on my progress.
“I think you need to dig a little deeper,” she said.
I sighed. Sweat poured off my face. I could barely hold onto the trowel, my hands were shaking so bad from fatigue.
“What are you digging with anyway?” Pastor Debbie asked.
I held up the trowel.
“You didn’t want to use the shovel?”
“We have a shovel?” I said.
She pointed behind her. And yep, there it was. A shovel was standing propped up against the side of the church.
Oh … there’s a shovel.
And there is the lesson on stubbornness. Whenever we think we can do something on our own, we’re blinded to anyone or anything that might help us.
Life is a struggle.
Sometimes I think my grandparents and my parents and every adult I ever heard tell this story when I was kid were telling the truth when they said they used to walk to school uphill—both ways—through the snow, because sometimes that’s what life feels like … uphill … both ways.
The good news is we don’t have to do it alone.
The bad news is that we have to first admit that we can’t do it alone. We have to get past our stubbornness. Only then do the blinders come off. Only then do we see what God has provided for us to help us get through.
I had a rough year this past year. I felt the events of my life were turning me into a person I didn’t want to be, someone who was angry and defeated. And then, this past Easter, God pointed out this pink church with red doors and said, “Go here.”
So I walked through the doors at Hope Episcopal and something happened that had never happened to me before in any church that I had gone to. I walked through those doors and in an instant all worry and doubt and fear vanished. I walked through those doors at Hope Episcopal Church and I knew who God wanted me to be, His plans for me. I knew the person I was supposed to be.
Most importantly, I knew I couldn’t get there alone. God had provided the church family that I had long been missing.
When Pastor Debbie handed me the shovel Tuesday morning, I was already so worn out I couldn’t even dig the hole with a shovel, so she took the shovel back and started digging, picking up where I had left off.
There is nothing in this life we’re meant to do alone. God has provided the tools. We just have to open our eyes and see.
