I’ve been thinking about my attitude lately because it needed an adjustment. Though I delight in sharing about all that I enjoy, the reality is that life also includes the mundane and routine and doing some activities that I just don’t enjoy. Here is one very real for instance in my life:
We have some big, beautiful trees on our property that I really enjoy. The variety of bark on the trunks is interesting to me, the shade they provide on a sweltering day is so welcomed, and the vibrant colors of the leaves before they flutter to the ground are all points in the positive column. When storms come through, as they have done lately, branches and limbs and little sticks fall – those would all be in the negative column because our yard person (me) would be in charge of assigning workers (me) to pick them up (me). We had a storm blow in quickly, and violently, Sunday evening, and I’ve already logged (no pun intended) almost three hours in picking up sticks. And it has not been as fun as a game to me. I had forgotten to focus on Colossians 3:23. Reality is, I wanted to be doing other, more enjoyable, things; but, this week as I stooped to pick up the remains of the storm that were strewn and scattered, I thought what if I changed my attitude about this not-so-enjoyable-to-me task? What if instead of picking up sticks, I was a skater picking up flowers on the ice after a performance? I could turn this ordinary task at hand into an everyday gift of grace and shift to make it a joyful time. I could do my work with the sticks like I *work* with my flowers…Hmmm. As my back bended low again to reach for a broken piece from a tree with a trunk whose lines looks like a maze, I thought of a quote from a book that has stuck with me since I read it in March – these are my notes from the book I was reading about writing a book, and I did not punctuate as I wrote:
“You simply keep putting down one word after another as you hear them as they come to you
you can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist
you can make the work a chore or you can have a good time
you can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were 13
or
you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself and so, in which,
you can find yourself”
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Hello Colossians 3:23:
“Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men,” HCSB
My actions in picking up sticks had me in the laborer/chore/teenager helping clean up the kitchen category and I knew where The LORD wanted me to make the shift in my attitude. So as I continued to bend low to pick up the broken limbs and scattered branches and bunches of leaves still clinging together, I was working for the Lord as I did this task. I was being Brother Lawrence in my own yard, but, I pictured myself more as Dorothy Hamill gracefully swirling around the ice and picking up bouquets of flowers. With every bend of my body, I had the opportunity to lay a crown at the feet of The One who gives me the ability, and the opportunity, to pick up the sticks. Though this picture is a bundle of sticks that I hold in my hand, they are my holy offering of a shifted attitude. An attitude that is adjusted to do this daily task with joy and delight and an artful attitude. To not think “there is another stick” but, to think:
Father, I’m bending to pick up the broken and offer it as a bouquet to YOU.
And somehow, in someway, I do believe they are as beautiful to Him as my gardenias are to me.
