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.