One Bite at a Time

I am confident it will be green someday . .

After spending a lot of the winter in California, coming home to the Pacific Northwest at the end of April was a shock.  Suddenly six months of deferred maintenance stared me in the face.  I went over the list of things that needed to be done and felt overwhelmed.

There was moss and mold all over our patios, front porch, driveway and docks.  The lawnmower, pressure washer and wave-runners needed tune-ups and oil changes.  The buoys needed a lot of repair.  The gutters needed cleaning.  The floor trench in front of the driveway needed to be cleaned out.  One of the wave-runner lifts needed repair.  The grill needed cleaning.

And then (groan) there was the yard. Bushes needed pruning.  Flower beds needed weeding and raking.  The grass needed to be edged, thatched, fertilized, and over-seeded and then covered with an 1/8th inch of peat moss.  The truck needed servicing. 

Add to this a few neighbors that needed help as well as other “little things” that needed attention inside our house.

As I reviewed all this, I thought, “Assisted living is looking pretty good right now.”  I’m 75 years old, but I feel like I’m 74.  I don’t bend like I used to.  I have arthritis in my legs and wrists.  It is an effort to get down on my knees.  I wonder if there is anything else I can do as long as I’m down there, like tying my shoes.

2 Corinthians 4:16 says, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”  It is the “outwardly wasting away” that was weighing on me.  I began thinking in terms of physical economy.  Do I really need to pressure-wash this year?  Do I really need to thatch and over-seed the lawn?   Do I really need to clean the gutters?  What can I put off until next year?  What about artificial turf? I was paralyzed with uncertainty and inaction for several days.

Then I remembered a saying from a mentor of mine.  “How do you eat an elephant?”  (That’s how my situation felt.)  “One bite at a time!”  What a stupid saying!  No one can eat an elephant.

Or another saying. "The longest journey begins with a first step."  Platitudes!  Let’s be realistic!  Pressure washing is a man-killer.  So is thatching a lawn.  Not for someone feeling as old as I felt.

Nonetheless, one morning I got up and the sun was shining.  I thought, “Well maybe I’ll just pressure wash the lower patio deck.”  Good idea, but first I had to change the oil and spark plug.  Well, I might as well do it with the lawnmower also.  As I went through the oil changes, I thought, “This is ridiculous!  If I pressure wash the lower deck first, it will get dirty again when I pressure wash the upper deck.”  So, I decided to pressure wash the upper deck first.

Yes, you guessed it.  One bite at a time. A first step.

Once I got into it, it wasn’t that hard.  I had energy and endurance I didn’t realize.  And I decided not to try to do everything in one day.  Today the upper deck.  Tomorrow the lower deck.  After that, the front of the house.  Then the docks.  One step at a time.  One bite at a time.  After five days of working a couple hours at time, all of the pressure washing was done.

Rather than feeling exhausted and discouraged, I felt stronger and energized.  I was tired at the end of each day and would complain to Carol good-naturedly about it.  But it was a good tired.  I guess I had a lot more stamina than I thought.  Plus, I had a partner like Carol who was there ready to help when I needed it.  And there were several times when she saved my bacon.

And so I continued on with thatching and over-seeding the lawn.  I’ve done this before and wasn’t looking forward to it.  On a dry afternoon, I cut the grass on the lowest setting of the lawnmower.  Then I got out the electric thatcher.  Thatching took a while, but it wasn’t hard.  Then I started edging the grass.  This was hard, on your knees work.  Then beauty bark.  Then the weed-n-feed, and grass seed.  Then the layer of peat moss to protect the seed.  No getting around it, this was hard work.  But I had built myself up to it, and it didn’t seem quite as daunting as my first impression at the end of April. 

A search and rescue ranger told me, “When you are completely exhausted and believe you can’t take one more step, you have only used a third of your reserves.”  Sobering.

I wasn’t alone in all this.  Seeing the magnitude of the task in front of me, Carol and I prayed for God’s wisdom and help.  I believe He gave us both: His wisdom to do a little at a time, and His stamina and energy with the actual work.

Joshua said, “So here I am today, eighty-five years old.  I am still as strong today as when Moses sent me out…”  Joshua 14:10, 11. Joshua would have been around 40 when Moses sent him out.  When I was 40, I climbed Mt. Rainier and ran half a marathon.  I couldn’t do that today.  But these old bones (with God’s help) can still handle pressure washing and thatching.