Miracle Mower

Yesterday Heaven sent us a lawnmower. It was one of those incidents that show that God does care about the details of our lives and when we are trying hard to do what He asks us to do He will bless us.

When we left Oregon, we left our lawnmower with our next-door neighbor. He needed it, and we couldn't fit it on the truck. When we got here we figured we'd pick something up at some point. Then our new next-door neighbor, Gary, told us that we were welcome to use his any time we needed. All last summer we used Gary's mower in exchange for filling his gas can. This summer we made the same arrangement. Everything was going along like it always had until Gary redid his dilapidated old fence. The position of the latch on Gary's new gate is such that you can only open it from the inside. Now every time we wanted to use the mower, instead of just slipping over there and grabbing it, we had to knock at the door and ask to be let in. This made the whole situation a little bit uncomfortable, but Gary was still very nice about it. The big problem was that Gary is not home very often. My windows of opportunity to mow the lawn open and close very quickly and too many times I had a chance and no one was home next door to let me in.

All this last week I'd been watching our backyard go from "nicely long" to "ridiculous jungle" but I was never able to hook up with Gary and get the mower. The Badger and I talked about it and considered buying a lawn mower off of Craig's List. We hesitated, however, because we are so very close to paying off some debt that we have been working very hard to get rid of. We've been praying for years for the Lord's help in getting rid of our debt and lately the Badger has had lots of overtime opportunities which have allowed us to just about pay it off by being very careful with our money. Buying even a cheap lawnmower was not in the plan. If we could just get by with Gary's mower for the rest of the season!

Yesterday I woke up bound and determined that by the end of the day the lawn would be mowed somehow, despite the fact that it was raining. Right after breakfast the Badger went off to a service project helping someone in our ward load a dumpster. The whole time he was gone I was scheming how I was going to get ahold of Gary's lawnmower. I had just finished all my morning chores and was about to go next door and try to at least get the mower now for use later when it wasn't raining, when the Badger came home and absolutely floored me by saying, "Guess what? I got a free lawnmower!"

"Does it work?"

"I think so." He then went downstairs and spent half an hour watching "Basic Lawnmower Care" videos online. The Badger is not typically very mechanically inclined, but he was motivated. After he'd watched several tutorials, he went and sharpened the mower blade, cleaned the air filter, changed the oil and put in fresh gas. By then the sun was out and the grass had dried off. And what do you know? The mower worked. And so he gave our shaggy backyard a buzz cut.

I love this man. I love his hard work and desire to serve, but most of all I love his faith. I love my new green lawnmower. And I am grateful to my Heavenly Father for His answers to our prayers, even our prayers about lawnmowers.