So, I've started reading Jerry Bridges' latest book, "Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate", and before I've even gotten that far in, it's already impacting me. Today, I had a very vivid picture of one of the sins Jerry talks about: Impatience. Now, I haven't gotten to that chapter yet, so I don't know exactly what he has to say about it, but after today, I've already discovered some things myself.
This is the story. I head home for Christmas tomorrow, and so I had to take down my beautiful (yet extremely dead) Christmas tree. I laughed to myself as I listened to "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" while I was taking OFF the ornaments from the tree. Oh, the irony. Anyway, I was ready to take the now very plain tree down, but as you may have gotten from my previous posts, I'm here alone. One of the guys who is still in town, Ryan, offered to come help me take it down after he got off of work, which was going to be in a couple of hours. The logical thing to do would be to wait for his help and in the meantime work on the other myriad things I had to do today.
This is where impatience comes in. And maybe some pride (also a chapter in the book). I just wanted to get the job done, and clean the living room and get it back in order, and I thought "I can do this myself. It can't be that hard." So what do I do? I take it down. How did I take it down? Well, by the grace of God, really. I mean, I unscrewed the tree stand from the six foot tree, and it didn't topple over on top of me. I was able to pull it out of the stand (only spilling a little bit of water - fortunately I had the good sense to put down a plastic sheet before I started), and all that was left to do was pull it through the back door to the back yard, where it will wait until I can properly dispose of it. Sure, it sounds easy, except the fact that the branches of the tree are about twice as wide as the door. And, as aforementioned, the tree was dead. I mean really dead. You looked at it wrong and half the needles would fall off. It's this gift I have with living plants - I can kill the heartiest of them all. The tree never stood a chance. But I digress.
For some ingenious reason, I decided to try to pull the tree through the door from the top. Um, that means every branch was being pulled the opposite direction from how it was growing. It worked for the Grinch when he crept to the chimney and stuffed the tree up, but he was able to close the tree like an umbrella, so he had an unfair advantage. Well, I soon discovered my mistake and turned the tree around. By this time the plastic sheet is only catching an eighth of the needles falling off the tree. The rest became a new rug for my carpet and flew various distances across the living room, and of course, out the door. As I pulled and tugged the tree, and as it inched its way out the door, branch by branch, and as I cut up my arms to no end on said branches, I thought to myself, "Self...why the heck didn't you just wait for Ryan?" But, at that point, I had to get the tree out, because there was no way it was going back in, and it blocked the only open door to my house. So, I pulled and tugged, and finally it came free. And you know...I didn't even feel any satisfaction. Relief? Yes. Satisfaction? No. I could have saved myself pain, frustration, and time, if I had only been patient.
After getting the tree out, I had to try to clean up my mess. I think I'll be finding pine needles for weeks. The sad ending to my sad tale is that my vacuum broke mid-way through the job. The Bouchards kindly let me borrow theirs, so I was able to finish, but it gives new understanding to the curse in Genesis 3, with its "painful toil", "thorns and thistles", and "sweat of your brow".
With 12 other "respectable" sins in the book, I wonder what lesson God has for me next...
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