Wow, you can actually see the house

I can't believe today is Sunday and my last post was Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were my first days at the weight room. This is something new for me and I'm really looking forward to giving it all that I can in the next few weeks and months to come. Thursday and Friday were also the shift meetings at work and I was able to share that one of my projects has resulted in over $1 million in savings so far this year. On Friday evening after the rolling tailgate party, Jim, Holly, and I took off on a trip through the countryside to the Little Egypt cemetery. We took the White Cloud. The White Cloud is this amazing old school bus. Random couches, chairs, and even a bed take the place of the original bus seats. As we were leaving the parking lot, Jim asked if I wanted to try driving. It has been a long time since I drove the dumptrucks on the farm so I was more than a bit nervous but really wanted to give it a shot. The drive was great and we made it back to town - despite passing by one of the supposed haunted places of Indiana.

Saturday, after riding bike, Trent and I started "trimming" some hedges and bushes around my house. I put trimming in quotes because more fitting words might include slaughtering or obliterating because Trent brought Ben's chainsaw. Let me tell you something, there is nothing quite like holding a chainsaw, pulling the cord, and hearing that baby roar to life. Oh the power! Abby captured some pictures of this exhilarating event. (The guy on the ground in the top picture is my brother, Troy. He stopped by for awhile, too.) We did some serious damage and had quite a bit of fun doing it. Actually, we did round two this morning and ended up with a truck and trailer filled with trimmings. In fact, Trent looked at the hack job that we ended doing to the tree in the top photo and said, "That just needs to come out." So he addressed the situation and in a fleeting hour it was gone. As we were working this morning, one of my neighbors stopped by and commented, "Wow, you can actually see the house." I started thinking about this. The hedges and bushes were so overgrown that it really concealed a good portion of the house. Strangely, I could relate to this. It is so easy for life to get overgrown by the weeds of life - worries and fears. These can choke the life right out of me - make me into someone who I'm not, conceal me. Last night, Jim talked about the parable of the sower. (This is also the same message that he referred to a turd sandwich but that is probably worthy of its own post.) Matthew 13:22 (The Message) refers to the weeds of life: "The seed cast in the weeds is the person who hears the kingdom news, but weeds of worry and illusions about getting more and wanting everything under the sun strangle what was heard, and nothing comes of it." Nothing comes of it. I really hope to continue on the journey closer to Jesus and away from the strangling weeds. I have renewed hope that rather than being strangled, by God's grace, I can produced a crop (see vs 23)