Lessons Learned Outdoors

Two weeks ago, we were at Community Hospital downtown on the fifth floor looking out the windows when we saw the thunderstorm coming. Dark and ominous skies sped toward Fresno. By the time we got downstairs and headed to our car, the rain was falling and the winds were nearly sweeping us off of our feet. From the freeway, we saw lightning shooting across the cloudline and touching down here and there to the west. The rain began to fall hard and fast, such that Johnny asked if it was possible that the rain could break the glass of our windows. I told him no, but if it hailed, that might be a different story.

I spoke too soon. When we turned on to our street, the hail began bouncing off of our windshield. It was making so much noise on our car that it was hard to hear each other speak. When we reached the safety of the house, Joe suddenly realized that the chickens were still out in the yard. He ran out in the hail and the pouring rain to check on them. The chickens were still jumping around the yard. Every time a hailstone hit their heads, they would jump and squawk and peck at each other. To be honest, we found this quite funny as we herded our ladies into the pen...and yes, we thought of the chicken little story. 

Sometimes the world pounds us, too...it's how we react that can make all the difference. We can squawk in complaint at all the injustices of the world. We can peck at each other instead of trying to work things out. Or we can take shelter from the storm in places of refuge.

This week, I spent a lot of time outdoors. I was attempting to clean the pool. I carefully take apart the filter and rinse each panel, then reassemble. The taking apart is easy...almost effortless, but you absolutely get dirty. It's putting it all back together again that's the adventure. Putting each panel into it's proper place, making sure all the holes line up where they're supposed to...now that's tricky! You have to lower the device (I call it the cap) down onto all those panels, making sure that each of the 8 spouts line up with the proper intakes on the cap while at the same time making sure that the long bolts don't get displaced from their holes. It's a challenging business!

I had a friend help me once, and he completely lost it when I had to take the panels out and reassemble them into a new arrangement. I'm patient and calm about this process, knowing it is more an art than a science. He said he if it were his filter, he'd just pay someone to do it for him, because he couldn't stand it.

It got me to thinking about how often we take things apart in our lives. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. Whether it's relationships or opportunities or anything else, destroying or dismantling them always happens more easily than putting it all back together again. And in the case of relationships, it's easy to end up very dirty when doing so. Putting them back together again takes a lot of work, determination, patience and care. And sometimes it takes lots of attempts to get it right. But when we "fix" what's broken or not working as well as we would like, we start being more careful about taking things apart in the first place!

I'm so grateful that the world has so many ways to teach us if we are paying attention. The world is our classroom! Get out your pencils. :-)