Who sang that song? It was the somethin..somethin Factory – right? I can’t remember.
What I do know is this urge of a story within…it keeps lingering. My story lately is in my yard. It’s in my dreams of what my yard can become and what it will take to create these visions into a reality. An oasis right before our eyes. A refuge of greenery, hammocks, plants, pergolas and a “back porch” design. Country Cottage. Garden. Farm life. Comfort. Sort of.
That’s the plan, anyway. I have a friend who took his whole house and made the outside like a tree. It’s called a Bark House. Tree bark is the actual exterior of his home. His back yard is a garden, a patio, a storage building with cedar shakes roofing and cottage-style porch along with a few thousand honey bees and some really heavy slate stone in his yard…..mixed up with millions of plants and flowers that bloom in the spring followed by some of his groceries crafted by his cautious planting of seeds throughout the year. I like my friend’s yard. I like his style. He’s a cool kat. He works really hard to get his yard as it is. When I wonder if our yard will become something of those sorts at his house…it makes me wonder about marriage.
One time a friend of mine was in financial planning, counseling and investments – he spoke of a major problem a lot of “young couples” had when entering into marriage: big dreams. He said those big dreams cost them a lot of money at the furniture stores and credit card companies….that they (we) try and keep up with their parents. They try and cultivate a false reality of everything they have ever grown up with by the time they say “I do” and the problem with that is it took their parents 25 years to accumulate their “stuff” so why should a married couple expect to start out their “lives together” with all that?? It is simply unrealistic to think (apart from independent and pure wealth) that this can happen and the rest of their financial scenario be anything close to healthy.
So, about my yard. Are my hopes and visions unrealistic? Not hardly! This is our fourth house in eight years of marriage. We have been blessed by moving. We do not like to move. We have moved. We have been blessed….I used to see a guy who, when asked “How are you doing?”, he would reply – always - “Blessed man….I’m blessed, man”. I think we are beginning to sense a bit of what my friend was telling us. We love our house. We have no plans of moving. We “plan” to stay. That is what Jesus told His disciples when he visited them after conquering death…after Easter Sunday…. “Stay”. He told them to do so until he would send (God the Father would send..) the Comforter to guide them from then on (Holy Spirit). So, we feel no sense to leave this home…it is our home. We really like our lives. Yes – there are days that simply stink. There are days where arguments happen, money runs out and my time with Jesus was absent and I felt the presence of another that did no feel like I was sustained…but – it does not change God’s love for me or my place in His kingdom. Still, I’m blessed, man…I’m blessed. My yard…like I was saying – it is this passage into a land of dreams and a land of manhood that only a few can really understand. Olivia says she gets sleepy in our back yard. I like the cool breeze. It helps me wonder. I wonder…what will come next in the land of day dreams and future hopes???
More to come…..next, a chainsaw…a fence, and a nap. More time with Christ…more story to tell.
Blessings,
-ao
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