God Told Me To Mow Your Yard

My first house, a Tudor style, 2-story in the Texas panhandle, was dirt cheap, hadn’t had an occupant in five years and needed a lot of TLC.  Moving in, 11:00 AM, a man, mid-40’s, scruffy, possible hangover (never judge a book, right?) on a riding mower showed up and said, “God told me to mow your yard.”  Awesome! God had sent an angel to welcome us to town.

His next words were the price needed to carry out God’s direction.  I was pretty sure God didn’t require compensation for a blessing but the yard needed a trim…or baling, and I had a lot of work to do so a deal to mow struck.  For the next hour the hum of a mower accompanied moving in. 

Noonish, the in-laws arrive to take us to lunch.  Reluctant to leave my ‘angel’ who had maybe a fourth of the mowing to go, he assured he’d finish in the next thirty minutes, before we returned, and knowing in a town of 2600, were there any problems with the job, I’d see him again, I paid in advance and went to lunch.

We returned to a ¾ mowed yard.  Optimistic, I decided he might’ve had to get more gas, eat lunch, buy trimmer string or been abducted by aliens.  It must have been aliens because I never saw the dude again. 

It’s a lesson I’ve been taught a couple more times since: if someone uses God as a reference it’s because nobody else is willing to vouch for them.  It’s a subsection in the ‘Buyer Beware’ rule.  And one that stands in the face of the ‘Always Assume the Best’ tenet (a well-meaning decree made by trusting people that don’t deal with actual humans).

I picked up another subsection of the ‘Buyer Beware’ rule this weekend (well, over the past few months), a statute I knew existed but can’t find a way to effectively implement, the ‘If It Sounds Too Good’ edict.

It started with a phone call about an AAU basketball team for my son.  The coach stressed discipline, humility, accountability and hard work.  That’s what I value and want my son to experience so we committed.

There were signs, an excellent assistant coach quitting early-on, scheduling and roster promises being broken, the “transparency” of finances becoming blurry, but the boy was improving and it was, so to speak, the only game in town.

This weekend the flickering fuse hit the dynamite.  The leader of the organization (the guy with the promises) with the help of a crazy 2^nd (or 3^rd or 4^th, not entirely sure) wife exploded into full blown idiot.  Without going into too much detail a cookie birthday cake for one of the players lead to the coach attempting to assault his 1^st marriage derived teen son in a scene worthy of Jerry Springer…and counter to his early statement to parents, “I don’t do drama!”

The silver lining is the rallying of the players and parents to keep the team together, support a young man in a tough situation and make lemonade with lemon juice squirted in their eye.

I’ve relearned something I already knew:  there are some bad assho…um, apples out there but some great people, too.  You’ll encounter both, can avoid neither and need to use sense when dealing with all.   Try to always be a blessing, never a curse and if the Lord above didn’t send you a memo, don’t believe someone saying, “God told me to mow your yard.”