Lessons from the Lawn

  With the luscious spring comes my least favorite task: mowing grass. I hate it. But when my attempt to use the lawn mower to scalp it to the roots fails, I resign myself to the fact that I’ll have to cut grass all through the hot Texas summer.

The trademark I leave behind is the wiggle rows of tire tracks. I can’t hold to a straight line. Not in cutting grass, not in drawing on paper. Not in life.

Before each week begins, I detail my schedule hour by hour. Regardless of the number of years I’ve done this, it turns out the same–only half the list gets marked off (maybe). Why do I keep up a practice that sets me up for failure? Simple. Half the list gets done. It keeps me on course for my annual goals.

My fictional characters’ lives are the same. They have things planned on how life should be, when poof! it’s gone before they can blink. Sometimes it’s gone before I can blink. A character will say or do something that disrupts what I had planned for them. At those times, I’m tempted to highlight and delete where things went wrong in the plot.

But not even God does that. I make a bad choice. He stays with me until I get my line straight. In the end, the destination is the same–not perfect, but still filled with hope.

And the whole yard gets mowed.

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For Him,

Sarah Elisabeth