THIS SUMMER I’VE BEEN “putting my house in order.” Or to be more accurate, I’ve been trying to put my yard in order. We are extraordinarily fortunate to live in a wooded neighborhood. But by the end of summer here in the Midwest, the lush foliage almost drips with sweat, the grass grows defiantly fast and the hardy weeds flaunt their profligate ways. I cannot win.
And yet I try. And when I do, the effort pays off immensely. Not in terms of my yard’s tidiness, which will never be achieved, but in my sense of groundedness, my rootedness in the dirt from which God made me and my connection to the very soil of life.
It hasn’t always been this way for me. I am no gardener. But this spring, something changed.
My sister Karen — also a pastor — was diagnosed with cancer in May. On her own with two sort-of-grown kids; the owner of an aging, well-worn house with constantly surprising needs; and a parish with inevitably ever-changing demands … this latest news was not exactly comfort food for the soul.
She’s fortunate, she tells me, that she’s getting state-of-the-art medical care, and she has a promising prognosis. She also possesses one of the sturdiest personalities I’ve ever known. She’s practical and organized, running through her to-do list with the same intentionality she’s always had.
Nevertheless, there is grief involved. Grief over hearing the word “cancer” and all that it carries. Grief over the daunting treatment that lies ahead. Grief over what her children have to carry in their worries. Grief over a season of her own life lost. Grief over the long-range plans set aside for a time at church.
And grief over her own wish-list set aside yet again — at the top of which is the desire to get the chance to put her yard in order. She thought this summer might be it: the chance to conquer the weeds, trim the hedges, mulch the tree beds, bring order out of chaos.
I was with her in late May when she had her initial surgery, the biopsies and uncomfortable recovery. I got to go with her on some appointments, get the laundry done, welcome visitors who brought their casseroles and bouquets and other love-offerings. I was not surprised — she is surrounded by a fabulous community of practical and fearless Christian souls.
But nothing prepared me for what swept in that Saturday morning. A team of a dozen jeans-and-T-shirt-clad church folks, a mix of old and young, skilled or strong. They came with rakes and hedge trimmers, spades and shovels, flowers to plant and 100 bags of mulch to spread. The flurry that followed astonished me. Bushes were groomed into round shapes that I didn’t know they had in them. Trees received a little trimming — just a little off the back and sides — and looked smarter than they had in years. Flower beds were freed of their unwanted nuisance-weed-neighbors, and gained companions that suited them perfectly. And the mulch — oh! the mulch — it covered every unkempt surface like a gorgeous carpet transforms unattractive concrete into a welcome mat.
This band of ordinary church members transformed my sister’s yard. They took ordinary dirt and, like God scooping it up, formed new life where there was none. They created order out of chaos. They created beauty out of ugliness — not just the untidiness of the yard, but the ugliness of the diagnosis, the ugliness of lost time, the ugliness of life’s unfairness, the ugliness of weary fear. They gave hope again, the promise of new life where it is needed most.
What they did to the yard — it was magical. What they did for my sister? It was no less than holy. Which is what I think of every time I pluck a weed and pray.
