BUT, spring has come and the grass is.... well, knee high. Needless to say, Coach and I are now the proud new owners of a little green lawnmower.
As we embarked upon our very first lawn-mowing experience as a married couple (how exciting does THAT sound?), I quickly decided I would use the rake and Coach could handle the mean green lawn machine. So I started raking. And raking. And raking. (Got to love that southern Magnolia tree that sheds 2,485 leaves in one day.) Oh yes, and I was in flip flops. Silly me, I know. My dad taught me better. Anyway, I got so excited about raking that I even decided to be a nice resident and rake off the sidewalk so the walking community did not have to climb a mountain of leaves on their path. But, I had to watch the road more than the rake to make sure no cars were coming down the street. And I became unaware of these small little critters called....
FIRE ANTS. Oh. My. Stars. I've never seen these lovely inhabitants of the underground until moving to the South. But they sure are taking a liking to me -- they've taken over our whole yard. The rain today washed the mounds away or I'd take a picture of how ginormous these ant "hills" are. It actually amazes me that a little tiny itsy bitsy being can create such a structure. But it's not just one little ant that does all that work, it's tens of thousands of them. Ants remind us that if we all stick together, we can accomplish great things. (A lesson from ants we could all stand to be reminded of...)
Anyway, I know to stay away from these fire ants. They are very territorial. They don't like for you to come near their homes or even their paths. But since I was paying attention to the cars and leaves, I didn't realize that I disturbed a pile. Oh boy. I felt the sting in my foot immediately. I dropped the rake, kicked off my flip flop and did the fire ant dance. I found the little stinker and brushed him off, only to already see his little red mark.
This ended my raking fun and I came in and put some Neosporin on it like I know Dr. Mom would've instructed me to do. So far, so good. Well, in just a few short hours there were two little pimple-y looking things on my REALLY itchy foot. I thought, "Hey, I'll pop them and it'll stop itching" BAD PLAN. Dr. Mom would not have advised this. My foot turned purple and HURT and those little "pimple things" did NOT pop. SCCCHHHUGAR BOOGER!
So guess what? Today, my foot started itching REAL bad at work. I took my shoe and sock off and saw two BIG pimple looking things. I scratched, but that didn't help. So, with every bit of human being that I could've been at that moment, I attempted to pop it again. Yup, that's right. I'm really smart. Guess what? It still didn't pop and it looked REALLY purple, hurt a lot and got REALLY hard.
Phooey.
I got to thinking about this whole thing though... How often do we humans do this sillyness? We don't watch where we are going or what we are doing and find ourselves being "attacked". We do a silly dance, get the problem off and then try to fix ourselves. We think we know what will work best.... and we don't. And when it doesn't work, we try to fix it again. Usually we only make the problem worse. It's like trying to get really sticky gum off your finger. It just keeps getting worse and worse until well, you have to cut your finger off. Just kidding :P
We have to realize that our way is not THE way. That there is a better way -- through Jesus Christ! Let Him clean up the mess -- He is better than the quilted quicker picker upper, Mr. Clean, the first aid cream, the band aid or anything else you could find in your cabinets!
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