It happened about seven years ago. It was spring, our family had moved to North Carolina the prior fall, and the 1/2 acre of grass that surrounded our house was beginning to grow. I was pregnant, and Mike was working about 168 hours a week.
We had no mower.
It was getting pretty jungle-y, and I was starting to freak out. We didn't have the money to buy a mower and even if we did, who was going to do it?
I remember so clearly praying, and being pregnant- crying, asking God to please send us someone to help us with this yard.
I was very overwhelmed with everything in our lives at the time and the yard was just the tip of the iceberg.
The next day there was a knock on my door. It was my neighbor Venessa. We had never really spoken much, just hello and goodbye, not much more. The conversation went kind of like this:
Venessa: "Kristen, God wants me to mow your yard!"
Kristen: "Oh, Venessa, no! I couldn't let you do that! We will figure something out!"
Venessa: "Kristen, I am not asking your permission, God wants me to do this, I am being obedient to Him! I am going to mow your yard for you I am just telling you."
Kristen: "Oh, well, I guess, okay?"
Venessa, continued to mow our grass for about two years until we got ourselves on our feet and bought our own riding lawn mower. We also became best friends, our kids became best friends and our yard lines became blurred, as we worked on them together. I often wish she was here to help me make some landscape decisions :)
This story comes to mind as we are dealing with an issue in our neighborhood, and I need to apologize for my heart and attitude.
Our neighbor, nice young couple with two small kids, up and left their house about 8 months ago. Don't know what happened to them, they didn't say, just left.
I have been worried about the abandoned house throughout the winter, and Seth did see them return once and they told him it was their second house that they would be back when it got warmer. Hmm. Don't know how accurate that is coming from a 8 year old.
Anyways, as it has gotten warmer their grass has gotten longer and longer and weedier and weedier. As we returned from our time in Az this last week their grass is almost as tall as Joshi! All I could think about was, I needed to report them to the home owners, to get this fixed!
Yeah.
So yesterday as Mike got the mower out to mow our yard he began to mow their yard as well. And at first I thought, "What are we going to mow their yard every time we mow???"
And a voice in my head said,"Maybe."
That is when the Venessa story came rushing back to me. Oh my. What a hypocrite. We don't know what the situation is for them, they may really need the help right now, and regardless, shouldn't we as a community care about the people and environment we are living in and around?
It was a wake up call to me. Thanks Nessa for being a great example to me, once again.
Kristen
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Vanessa is an incredible christian lady-she lives her faith. She is a wonderful example to all of us. I'm sure that you miss her very much! Oh and BTW-do mow the yard next door. It will help your house look better and you never know with things the way they are-the people could really be hurting. OUr next door neighbors moved in and left-the weeds were growing every where and people just keep leaving ads on their porch, door and garage door. We noticed the other day that the weeds are gone, but all the junk was still there. We are pretty sure the other neighbor cleaned up the weeds. so we picked up all the junk and threw it away-no one would ever know now that no one is home-good for our house too. :)
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