The One When the Lean-To Fell Down

Sometimes (a lot of times) things happen in life that are out of our control. Other times there are those things that happen that we cause and they are directly related to something we did. We often blame ourselves and the devil whispers lies in our heads relating to the category of being unlovable. "How stupid, why would you do that?" All those kind of lies or anything related to them making us feel like unlovable piles of goo.

We have been working on taking down the trees out of our yard since shortly after moving in. Many were hollowing out and all of them showed severe signs of disease. We've been working on cutting down trees, sawing them up into chunks to be split for firewood, burning the limbs, raking and burning the leaves - you know the drill. Non-stop. Towards the end, we were getting to the trees that were getting a "little bit" trickier. Add that to the fact that we were getting down-right tired. Well here's the thing. When trees are in tricky spots or twisted up in a weird way and you are tired, bad things are about to happen. We were hitting the tree project hard again and the first tree went down fine - missed the fence and everything! (though barely). The next tree couldn't be that hard - - right? Wrong. The next tree fell square on the corner of the lean-to connected to our little shop. Yup - square on - dead hit. Boom - just like that.

Thankfully it was just the lean-to and no one got hurt in any way. I immediately froze. When things like this happen, historically the entire weekend would be ruined and we'd need to tip toe around for the rest of the weekend. My very first thought was "Great, now the weekend is completely ruined." Joe simply set the chainsaw down and walked to the house. I can't imagine what was going through his head. All I could think of to do was pray. So I started praying, thanking God that no one was hurt and asking God to protect my mind and keep it from any of the devil's lies. I was pretty confident the devil was working overtime with the shooting "unlovable" lies into Joe's head so I also started praying for that too. It's important to be prepared and ready for the devil to strike because he does and he will time and time again.

Ephesians 6:11 says "Put on all of God's armor so that you'll be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil."

John 8:44 ".....He was a murderer from the beginning. He always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies."

Eventually Joe came out of the house and the most miraculous thing happened. We talked. So I don't know about y'all and your perfect relationships; however, for us - when these bad type of things happen - one of us gets really angry and the other clams up in response to the anger and doesn't speak for weeks. As we grow and mature in our relationship with God and each other, we are combatting that unhealthy cycle. So yes, this is a miracle. We talked and even laughed as we cleaned up the tree and started working on the limbs. We worked on clean up of that tree the rest of the evening and had a big ole' bon fire with the limbs going strong by evening.

At one point I grabbed Joe's arm and we even danced to the music blaring by the fire. Take that devil, we talked (first and foremost and the most important element), we laughed, and we danced. What the devil tried to make into an horrible unbearable weekend, God turned into one of my favorite weekends and most remembered weekend of all time. Why? Prayer works first of all and secondly, communication and bringing the devil's lies to light which stomps out his tactics.

Yes, it sucks that we have to fix the lean-to, but it's not the end of the world and truly isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. So that's the story about the lean-to and how God's power and communication worked in the middle of our daily lives.

Oh - on another note, we stopped cutting down trees and hired actual professionals to finish the last daunting trees in the yard. This is another thing to note, God brings wisdom right when you need it most...