Grass is Greener Where You Water It

 

A few months ago I was lying  on my bed checking emails on my phone when Barney came in. He climbed up next to me and said, “We have two choices.”

“I sure hope you are going to elaborate so I don’t pick the wrong one here.”

Long sigh. He’s got my attention. I am assuming it has to do with money so I am already annoyed and defensive.

“We can either call it quits or do this book together.” He holds up the Love Dare book. I bought it right after we watched the movie.  He didn’t have any interest in doing it back then.

I said to myself, “Ok, Christi, now is not the time to be the uber smart-aleck I told you so nagger that you can be.” So I answered, “I am in”. 

I wish the rest of this blog was – And we finished the book and lived happily ever after.

I think we quit on the third week with the book being launched across the bedroom and the lights shut off. I found it Saturday, cleaning under my bed. I sat down with it and smiled. Fourteen years and we are still as passionate as day one. We are either passionately in love or passionately homicidal (kidding). Anything in between and we get bored. You wanna make out or irritate each other.

This is us.

Our parenting style is different. I am a say it twice and you’re lucky, third time there is no such thing as luck. Barney is laid back and if he has to put up a fight he will just do it himself. This can kick up some lovely debates. He thinks I get upset too quick and I want to put a little flame in his seat. 

The other day, in one of my challenge groups my friend, Laura, posted a photo. It said “The Grass is Greener where you water it.” It’s a health challenge and we are talking about taking care of our bodies. It hit me pretty hard. I quickly pushed the thought out of my head and moved on.

Lately, I will be thinking and I will hear that again, “The grass is greener where you water it.”

I watch the Real Housewives. It’s the only show I watch (strange addiction). I was watching my show last night after everyone had gone to bed and again, “The grass is greener where you water it.”

I hear you, Lord. I was thirty minutes in to my favorite show when God asked me to go pray for Barney while he slept. I did. Recently we haven't been communicating nicely. A little dig here and there and you're digging a big hole in between you.

As I was lying there, I remembered one of the activities we did in the Love Dare book was to write down all the faults your mate had. I could only think of four. You wouldn’t know that by the way I can nag and talk. You would think I thought he couldn’t do anything. I filled the whole sheet up with what he does right. I remember that powerful reminder of why I love this guy so much.

You don’t share the faults with them in the activity. We were supposed to burn them. I had left mine folded up on the coffee table and one of my brutally honest loving children said, “Hey mom you have more faults than this”. I am so glad they learned to read in school.

“Thanks, but those are your dads.” I am definitely not doing the Love Dare challenge with that kid.

I remembered last night that during these last few weeks where we have been fire and ice that my grass will always be brown unless I water it. Greener yards are just a mirage, I know. You get there to find the sand in your mouth and the burn on your back.

Some yards look well kept. The flowers are always in bloom and the weeds never grow. You get to know them and you learn they once had a sink hole. They had to shovel and fill and water to build their yard.

The Grass is Greener where you water it. I hear you, Lord. Help me to water my grass and not trample it beneath my feet or by the words of my mouth.

In Hosea Chapter 2, Gomer, the prostitute that God told Hosea to marry, runs back to her old lifestyle. She runs after her lovers that give her food and drink and olive oil. The oil drys up and the figs wither. Her jewels are taken and she has forgotten Hosea.

Hosea and Gomer already had children and the Lord told them to name them Lo-Ruhamah (which means not loved) and Lo-Ammi (not my people). Israel had been unfaithful to the Lord, they had watered other grass. Though they thought his anger would burn against them, he shows them through Hosea and Gomer his pursuit of us. I have shared this before, but I love that picture of God coming after us. My dad used to play this song when we were kids called “When God Ran”. It’s a song of the prodigal son:

He ran to me,
Took me in His arms, held my head to His chest
And said "My son's come home again".
Looked in my face, wiped the tears from my eyes
With forgiveness in His voice
He said "Son, do you know I still love you?"

It caught me by surprise when God ran

Hosea, like God, goes after her and leads her to the wilderness to speak tenderly to her. He gives her back her vineyards and the Lord makes it the Valley of Hope.

I felt like I wasn’t suppose to post this the other day. I let it sit. I went to bed last night and I couldn’t sleep. I suddenly remembered that Barney once pursued me like this. I was 22 with two toddlers at home. We had been married three years. I got married at the age of 19 and loved Barney very much. At that time there was a lot against us.  Heartbreaking circumstances we went through made me feel alone. I felt like the public spectacle and the loss was harder than I ever imagined. (That’s another blog, another day)  The one person that understood my pain was also the one person I laid all the blame on. Barney was a new Christian. I grew up in the church. I understood morals, right and wrong and broke a lot of the rules. I had never allowed myself to be embraced by grace. I ran. I spit in the face of everything we promised each other and tried everything possible to shut the door.

I went to a co-workers going away party after work. Barney worked nights and my brother in law and his girlfriend at the time watched my kids. I passed out in a yard and my friend took me to her house to sleep it off. I woke up in the middle of the night with Barney at the door telling me it was time to go home.

“What’s the baseball bat for,”  I asked him.

“In case I needed it.”

I remember Barney praying a lot back then. I thought his open Bible in the living room was a self-righteous ploy.  I was mean. I had turned my back on everything that I knew and he refused to give up on me. Refused.

He finally talked me into marriage counseling. I think it was my dad, actually. I didn’t want anyone to think I didn’t try. Six weeks we sat in marriage counseling and let me tell you it wasn’t a bunch of how does he make you feel and lets learn to communicate stuff. It was this is what the Bible says. This is what  a wife is. This is what a husband is. This is not easy and no I don’t care what he did and I don’t care what she did.

I remember our final day. I was still a hardened stone of a person. Pastor Stone told us God had a plan. He was going to pray and fast for us. One thing made me laugh, he told us not to give him a gift when it worked out, just a card or let him know. I thought Dude, you’re gonna starve before I stay and why would I give you a gift. God won’t forgive me for this and I am already gone.

I woke up a few weeks later, completely broken. It’s like the light switch had come on and I could see everything I was about to throw away.

Pastor Stone lived forty miles away. He was pumping gas at Casey’s in Wathena, where we lived. I walked over to him and said, “Thank you, Pastor Stone, we made it.”

I am a believer in prayer and fasting by the way.

And I am thankful that Barney watered our grass. He tended it to it every day and Lord the was faithful.

 

And  the Lords promise to us in Hosea is:   

 “In that day I will respond,” declares the Lord – I will respond to skies and they will respond to earth; and the earth will respond to grain, the new wine and the olive oil and they will respond to Jezreel. I will plant her for myself  in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one’. I will say to those called, Not my People, ‘You are my people’, and they will say, You are my God.

I know I have used this scripture before. I know the running theme may be getting old for some. The enemy wants us to quit. He whispers reasons in our ears, begs us to hang on to hurts, seeks revenge and not forgiveness. He sells it in a pretty package that you deserve. It's not just marriages. The grass is greener where you water it may mean your home, your church, your job, your friendships, wherever you are called.

Barney asked if I was sure I wanted to share. I am sure. Every time God places a dream in my heart or an opportunity at the door, the enemy threatens to tell who I really am.  I will tell you. I am forever wrapped in the arms of grace, forgiven by the one who bore my sins, and he knows every past mistake and he knows the ones I continue to make. He knows there’s someone out there who thinks their marriage, their hope, their life is ruined. It’s not. He makes all things new. He’s the fixer of the broken, redeemer of the lost, hope for the forgotten and he neither sleeps nor slumbers and when he sees you coming back from afar off He will run to you.

So I share my testimony (testimonies – there’s a lot)

And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.- Revelation 12:11

                                                          He gives us beauty for ashes.

 

Life Lesson from Marathon Training

To get where you want you have to do things you don’t like

I don’t like running but I wanted to run a Marathon. I don’t mind running but if I had to choose between running and another workout, running normally doesn’t win. We ran a half marathon 6 years ago. We trained to run with a group of people thinking we were training for a marathon. Mom and I found out later it was only a half but we had trained up to 18 miles. So I knew it was possible. I just couldn’t muster up the nerve to put myself through that. This year my phrase was Do Hard Things. It’s a Hard Thing I wanted to do. It was on my bucket list. I decided it was now or never.

There are goals we set in life and its the day to day training that gets us there. I couldn't jump in a race and decide to run 26.2 miles. I had to be consistent with my training. I had to show up for the grunt work to get the to the finish line. The photos of race finishers are inspiring. There's hoopla around a race. There's no one cheering you on during the training. You are doing it rain, snow and humidity. You do it because you know what the pay off is.

In finances we don't buy what we can't afford. In relationships we apologize and forgive when we don't want to. In health we do the workout and make healthy choices to reach our goal. In the end it pays, we pay off debt, have better marriages, have better health.

Our first training day!

 

Not everybody is rooting for you. Smile, nod, move on.

I know. Can you believe that? We all have a desire or a passion to do something and I have found that we need to be careful about who we share our dreams with. There are dream killers out there. You share your goal and they email you all the things that could go wrong. You could die. Marathoners die. You won’t lose any more weight. You will lose all of your muscle tone. It’s really not good for your heart. It kills your immune system. Why would you want to do that? I actually had a customer email me and tell me not to get bombed.

I don’t think it’s that they don’t want you do succeed or do well, they just don’t want you to do more than them. You begin to climb the ladder and they grab your ankles. Shake ‘em off and keep climbing. Some people live in an constant state of “life sucks”. You can sit on that bench with them. It’s your dream. It’s your goal. Keep going. My favorite quote by John Maxwell is "Sometimes you Win and Sometimes you learn." You will never know what you are capable of until you try. You can't sit on the sidelines forever and you can't let other peoples opinions keep you from trying. So what, you fail, they laugh. Try again.

What’s hard today will be easy later.

Our first long run was 5 miles. Our short run at the end was 6 miles. Every long run hurt but the next week in only felt hard after we passed the previous week’s mileage. I think that’s why we give up on our goals so soon. It’s too hard. It’s too much time. It’s seems so far away. If we kept going every time we wanted to quit we’d be there- Finances, Faith, Marriage, Fitness…whatever. It doesn’t get easier. You get better. We are constantly looking at the distance of the Finish line and not seeing how much we can close the gap by doing a little more today. You won't lose 50 pounds in a week, pay off you mortgage in a month, or train for a marathon in one either. You can break it off in small goals and push yourself every day to get there. Once you gain momentum in your goals, you will be unstoppable. Do it today. Do it tomorrow. Repeat.

Attitude Matters-Quitting can’t be an option

The days I showed up with a good attitude I ran better. The days we showed up giving each other dirty looks the run was hard. Our last 20 miler was hard. It was a hot humid day. We were used to cool and cloudy. We went through twice the amount of water as usual. At mile 15 one of us ended up crying on the road and the other one cussing innocent Yorkie dogs. We had to regroup. We had five miles left to go and it took some deep digging and a few dirt stained tear streaks to get to the end.  It was tough, I began to wonder if I could really pull off 26.2 miles. I was discouraged.  Mom was discouraged. We kept reminding ourselves we ran 20 miles before and we did fine. That one bad run, just about sent us to the chicken exit.

I had a really bad attitude during miles 3-11 of the actual marathon. They were supposed to have a Port-a-Potty at several stops. I’ve had four kids.  It was mile 11 before I found a bathroom. I was thinking about my survey for the last 5 of those. I was going to let them know how hard it is to run without a bathroom and rude it was to think we would want to pee on the side of a busy highway. I was praying that I wouldn’t pee my pants and planning to call Barney to bring me clean ones if I did. I was getting grouchier by the minute.  The lady at the first bathroom in 10 miles said the delivery guys over slept and they were very sorry about the restroom situation. My attitude was wound up over something out of their control.

How many times do we do that in life, in relationships, in work. One bad run and you’re done. Focus on the good runs, the good in people, the good in your day to day. Stop putting Quit on the table as an option. Seek the truth and answers before filling out your mental survey on someone. There just may be a reason for the madness.

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength

Both books I read and all my runner friends said to trust the training. We will make it 26.2 miles. Trust the training. On Marathon day we had only run 20 miles. We were going to have to run 6.2 more miles. I had to push that out of my head a dozen times and keep telling myself to trust the training.  Miles 21-23 were tough. There was a moment when I didn’t think I could make it. My legs were sore, my hips hurt, and I wasn’t sure if I had feet anymore.

“Lord, help me” was what I prayed over and over. “Please get us to the end”.  He did. At times I felt waves of relief and bursts of energy, and I felt him telling us we were going to make it. It was during those last few miles I began to discuss these lessons I learned with him.

He gives us training to run our race. My race looks different than yours. You might finish your race in the time it takes me to run half of mine. We rounded mile 13.1 as one of the runners finished his 26.2. We cheered him on too.  I may run awkwardly and slow and someone else has speed and grace. I have bad training days and attitudes to overcome. He may call me to do things and go places I don’t want to go, but he says to trust the training. We win this race.

Crossing the Finish Line!

I can’t begin to describe the feeling of seeing mile marker 26 and rounding that last corner to see all of our family members standing with matching shirts and signs. The tears rolled. They knew how hard we had trained, how many hours we put into this, they endured our bad days, lost socks, blisters, and aches too.  I couldn’t help but think of the day I cross the ultimate finish line and an army of saints and angels that have gone on before me, will cheer us to the end. They will know the trials we faced, the hills we climbed, the failures we faced.  There won’t be a guy at the end with a medal and congratulations. When I stay the course and run the race I will hear the Savior say, “Well done thy good and faithful servant".  It will make every training run, every hill, every blister, every ache worth the training.

Our shirts said:

 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. 1 Timothy 4:7

It’s my prayer.