You’d think it would be simple. Just get out the mower, run it over the lawn, no more clover. Right?
Not exactly.
On Saturday, I finally decided to overcome my inertia and go at the lawn. At first glance, of course, it now looks great. All the overgrown clover is gone, and all that’s left is some nice, green (well, a little yellow in spots) grass. Problem solved!
On closer inspection, though, I can see that I’m in for a very long haul with this lawn.
I’m really ticked at myself.
Instead of making time to write in my blog, to keep connecting with and reflecting on my spiritual journey, I’ve made time for just about everything but. It’s been over a month since I’ve written, and my spiritual life reflects it. Back in November I wrote about how I wanted to write here every day. That lasted two days. But at least I was writing a few times a month.
Now I’m slipping into bad habits. It’s so easy to drift into a pattern of letting it go, of procrastinating, of thinking, “I don’t feel like it now, I don’t have time, I don’t have the energy.” Everything in my life seems to be a reflection of my lack of discipline, and my spiritual life seems to always be the first thing to go.
It’s kind of surprising that I’ve not written about sunrises at all, considering it’s probably my favorite time of day (and it’s the first line of the song that launched this blog). I’ve had this half-thought floating around in my head for a long time—probably years—but it never really crystallized completely until this morning. Most people consider clouds a blemish on an otherwise perfect sky. But God can’t create perfect sunrises without clouds.
I picked up a card from the pile next to the guest book yesterday and was immediately struck by the image on the front: the sun hanging over the ocean, an intense orange glow reflecting on the waves and the clouds. But was it setting or rising? Considering that I was in line at a viewing, the obvious answer was that it was setting. But it was impossible to tell just from the picture, and it occurred to me that perhaps it was deliberately ambiguous.
