Front Porch Rocking Chair

Today I mowed the yard at my first house for the first time.

And then I clipped all the grass along the edges because I don’t have a trimmer lol. And I swept the whole porch and the front walkway.

Then I sat in our creaky rocking chair on the porch and I looked out at my handiwork under the pink dogwood tree in the yard. Because the grass had been so tall it looked a little ratchet honestly. But it was mine. I was the one who cared for it and loved it and worked for it. I made it what it was.

Isn’t that what God created me to do? Did he not instill into us as humans, image bearers, the unique capacity to cultivate life in what we have been given? Maybe this is what it means to be alive - to bring forth more life.

Maybe taking care of my tiny yard is a God-given reminder that my deepest satisfaction as a human and a woman and a follower of Christ is intimately connected to the life that unfolds in the things and people around me.

And maybe this small house to love is a gift, a fulfillment of a promise and a calling from years ago that I am only now even beginning to be ready to step into.

Maybe it’s both a fulfillment of that promise and a promise in itself; a promise that I have only just begun to see the life the Father is unfolding in me and that in four more years I will look up and be even more amazed at God’s goodness to me than I was today sitting on my front porch.