Remembering Gifts and Blessings From God

This past week I started reading One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, by Ann Voskamp. It's a really great book, and because it is written differently than most books today it makes you have to focus on what you are reading and really pay attention. So far it is has talked about Ann's life, what happened to make her who she is, and what began her journey to name 1,000 gifts from God. I think I am going to go on this journey, to acknowledge all the gifts I receive from God, and while I want to wait until I finish the book to officially start I was reminded of one HUGE gift tonight. After dinner the hubby and I were discussing what we had to do. His list, as usual, was WAY longer than mine, and so I offered to mow the lawn. I've only used our riding lawn mower a couple of times, and had to re-read the instructions just to get it started.

As I was driving like a mad woman all over our lawn—and quite enjoying myself—I was reminded what a chore mowing the lawn was the first summer we were in our home. We have close to an acre of lawn to mow—around the house, garage, and chicken coups, around the garden, the utility pole, a few rocks and trees—and the first year we did it all by hand. Yup, all we had was a little 18-inch Lawnboy, a VERY old one. It took us anywhere from three to five hours to mow the lawn depending on our energy level, how high the grass was, and how well the mower wanted to work. Then the next summer we were given the gift of our riding lawn mower, which you can about read here. Instead of taking me three or five hours, I was able to mow it all in about an hour and fifteen minutes. Not only has our awesome John Deere riding lawn mower been a wonderful gift but it has also given us the gift of saving time and energy. It's nice to be able to enjoy the outdoors without completely exhausting yourself, too! I know I said I wanted to finish Ann's book before I started counting God's gifts, but, oh well... looks like I've started already! Keep pinchin' :-)

God's Grace In The Midst Of A Lawn Mower Battle

I have this buddy who lives in Virginia, and during the months of February and March, while Dani and I are still shoveling snow from our driveway and trying to stay warm, he likes to call me up and talk about how he's prepping the lawnmower for the first mow of the season. When we're still waiting for the temperature to rise above 30, he's out getting a tan. When his barbecue grill has gone through one propane tank, we're still waiting to even use ours.

I don't get to gloat to him very much, but I will say this: I have a far more awesome lawnmower! And though I don't get to use it as much as he gets to use his, mine's got more horsepower, a wider cutting range, and far more style. I try to use this to make him jealous, but I don't think it ever works.

Anyway, so after months and months of a laboriously long winter, we finally had a nice sunny day where I got to dust off my awesome riding mower and give the lawn a once over. First, it was time to change the oil.

And so began the first of many things that went wrong that day.

You shouldn't change the oil on a completely cold engine. It's best to let the mower run for 10 minutes or so to warm up the engine. It makes the oil flow better. But after sitting around all winter, my lawn mower's battery was dead. This did not surprise me, but it didn't really make me happy either. I did a quick internet search to see if it was ok to jumpstart a mower's battery with a car, and though most people said it was ok, they advised: DO NOT START THE CAR! Apparently the rev of the car's engine will overpower the mower's battery and potentially cause it to catch on fire. I'm no mechanic. All I know is what I read, and what I read on at least six different websites was: do not start the car! Do not start the car! Do not start the car!

Well, that didn't work.

My frustration was growing.

I called up a local retailer who serviced the mower and asked about how to jumpstart it. The serviceman said: "Start the car."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I don't want to blow up my mower."

"What makes you think you'll blow up your mower?" he asked

"The internet."

He laughed. "Well, we do it all the time here."

So I said a quick prayer, started the car, and mower jumpstarted just fine.

Stupid internet.

Now, time to change the oil.

Again, I'm no mechanic, but I've changed the oil on enough cars to know the process. I know you're not supposed to over-tighten the oil filter. It says right on the oil filter: tighten by hand. Furthermore, the John Deere instructional video on how to change your John Deere oil filter clearly states: Be careful not to over-tighten your oil filter. Well whoever it was at the manufacturing plant who put this oil filter on must have used a power drill because I nearly broke my hand trying to get it off. I ended up having to make a trip to Home Depot to buy a special oil filter wrench. After another quick prayer and a few grunts and groans later the filter finally came off.

It was passed noon by the time I finally got the oil changed and I was thoroughly aggravated by what had become an exceptionally long task. My entire morning had been wasted on what should have been a 15 minute job.

And I still wanted to:

1. Mow the law
2. Clean the barbecue grill
3. Take down the broken pieces of fence
4. Stack some wood
5. And maybe get started on the upstairs renovation

Ambitious, I know.

I did manage to clean the barbecue grill though, and that was another laborious task more time consuming and messy than I had anticipated.

But back to the mower.

Ten minutes into mowing the lawn I noticed smoke coming out of the engine. The oil cap had popped off and the brand new three quarts of oil I had poured into the tank was having a party all over the engine. Awesome. Fifteen minutes later everything was as clean as I could make it, but the battery was still dead. So I pushed the mower over to the car to jumpstart it again.

At this point, it occurred to me that with so much oil spread all over the engine, and live jumper cables being hooked up to the mower, there was a good chance I could blow myself up. I had cleaned up the oil spill pretty well, and figured if I was extra cautious when hooking up the cables I would be ok, and—after another quick prayer—I was.

I mowed for another 10 minutes before I had to get off the mower and move the newly cleaned grill. Upon forgetting to put the mower in park, the mower powered down once I stood up. The battery was still dead, and this time I was too far away from the car for a jumpstart.

My aggravation peaked.

It was now about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. That's it. I was done. Apparently I was not supposed to work outside that day. Life tried to warn me first thing that morning when the mower's battery was dead, and again during my epic battle with the oil filter. I should've listened. I should've just stayed inside and procrastinated the day away.

But, in the plus column, I learned two things from all of this:

1. The internet is stupid. Granted, the internet has a lot of great advice and instructions for many of life's little issues, but I'm sure if it were possible to compile all of the info on the internet and sort it out into "truth" and "non-truth" 90% of it would be absolute rubbish.


2. God is never-endingly gracious. Despite my horrible attitude, God answered my prayers to help me get the oil filter off. Despite my near temper-tantrum, He answered my prayer to get the mower started. And even though I was ready to put my fist through a wall after the oil spill, God graciously prevented me from blowing up.

Despite all that went wrong that day, and despite my poor attitude, God continued to meet my needs and prove His reliability even when I wasn't acting very deserving of it. It just goes to demonstrate what a truly gracious God we have. His goodness and mercy extends to all those who ask for it.

As far as my awesome lawn mower goes, I'll revisit the dead battery some other day. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, to which I say: good. I didn't want to work outside anyway.

Keep pinchin' :-)

A Childhood Memory

Dani here. To expound on Jake's story from yesterday about our lawnmower, yes, we both prayed for God to give us a new lawnmower. I distinctly remember my prayer—"Lord, if You could just GIVE us a lawnmower, that would be great!"—and here's why.

When I was a little girl, probably not more than four years old, my family struggled with finances. We lived in town and had only a small yard to mow, however we didn't have a lawnmower. I don't remember if our mower broke or what happened to it, I only remember that whenever it was time to mow the lawn my dad would walk down the street to my grandparents's house and borrow theirs. He'd push it down to our house and return it when he was done. I don't remember how many summers this went on, but I clearly remember what happened next.

One Sunday after church our family drove into our driveway to see a big box waiting for us. Inside the box was a brand new lawnmower. As I recall, there was a note on the box that read simply: "From God."

I always thought that this story was so awesome, not just the fact that someone would meet a need we had, but that they would choose not to reveal themselves and instead let God get all the glory. These are stories I want my imaginary kiddos to grow up hearing about. I want them to know that God meets our needs and our wants and that He uses His people to do it.

Some day I hope that Jake and I are in a place financially that we can do something similar—bless someone we know that has a need or a legitimate want, but meet that need in such a way that God gets the glory for it. That's part of why we penny pinch. It's why we are on this journey to debt-free living. As long as we have debt we have something that is hindering us from being fully used by God, and I don't want debt to have that kind of power over us.

So I will keep pressing onward, through the good and the bad in order to be free from the enslavement of debt.

Keep pinchin' :-)

The Crazy Story of Our Lawnmower

In our pursuit of the "American Dream" Dani and I bought about four acres of property. About one whole acre of that is occupied by two things: buildings and lawn. Lots, and lots of lawn. The lawn isn't flat by any means, and, moreover, it's interrupted in numerous spots by trees, bushes, stones, and other large objects. So when it comes to mowing it can be quite a chore.

When we first bought our property, my grandfather generously gave us an old Lawn-boy push-mower—the very same mower that I cut my teeth on as a teenager helping him take care of his grass. The thing was pretty old and it smoked like a chimney, and with only an 18-inch blade it took about four or five hours to mow all of our property. As hard as it was mowing everything on that ancient little push-mower, it was harder on my body. But that didn't matter, because a new lawnmower wasn't in the budget. So, alas, I resolved to just continue to use that little Lawn-boy until I had run it into the ground... that is, if I didn't have a heart attack first.

Dani and I had started to pray about our lawnmower situation, asking God to help us find a good deal on a lawnmower that would A) be large enough and durable enough to handle all of our property, and B) have a decent amount of horsepower to take care of some of the other tasks we had in mind, like gardening, hauling leaves and wood, and pushing snow.

Now, we're not sure which one of us prayed the following—Dani remembers praying it, but I also remember laying in bed next to her one night, staring up at the ceiling in our bedroom, just comically calling out to God, "And Lord, if you could just GIVE US a new lawnmower that would be awesome!"

Two weeks later.

I was sitting at my desk at work when I got a call from Lowe's. The gentleman on the other line said he apologized for the inconvenience, but they were very busy with deliveries and wouldn't be able to deliver my lawn mower until the following week.

"Um, but I didn't order a lawn mower," I said.

"Oh," came the reply. "Is this Jacob Grant?" He read off my address.

"Yeah."

"Well, I've got a brand new John Deere D-140 here with your name on it."

He went on to explain that the lawn mower had been bought and paid for, but he didn't know by whom. We arranged a delivery date and time and then I hung up, still a bit confused. I called Lowe's directly and asked to speak with the gentleman again just to be sure it wasn't some kind of scam, but, no, it wasn't. There was indeed a brand new $2,000 John Deere D-140 riding lawnmower, bought and paid for, sitting at Lowe's with my name on it. Twenty-two horse power. Forty-inch cutting radius. Full length welded steel frame. *insert Tim Allen grunting here* In short, it was a beautiful lawn mower, and it was more than enough to handle everything we had in mind.

We never found out who gave it to us, but we have our suspicions. Ultimately we decided that since the gift was given anonymously it would be disrespectful to the giver to attempt to find out who it was.

In the end, we have to give God the glory. We prayed, and He answered. What's interesting to note is that our prayers weren't any kind of long elegant discourse. We weren't bowed on our knees, and I don't even think my eyes were closed.

"Lord, if you could just GIVE US a new lawnmower that would be awesome!" That's what was said. We simply cast our cares upon Him, stepped back, and let Him work. As usual He chose to work through His servants by impressing upon someone's heart to meet this need for us. It was awesome to be the recipients of such a generous gift, but even more awesome to be able to tell this story again and again and give the glory to God the provider.

Keep pinchin' :-)