Up until about three years ago, we Cernekas lived in a 1,200 sq. ft. starter home. Our family of six, which also features two cats and a dog, were pack pretty tightly into that tiny house. Our home had almost no storage space and was impossible to keep clean. Erin and I and the frothy horde (what Erin’s likes to call our children) needed a new place to live. We put our house on the market in March of 2015 and moved into a new home just two months later. This new (to us) house was more than twice the size of our previous home and it had a basement! The BEST part of this home, though, was the backyard, which was surrounded by woods on all three sides.
It was a beautiful setting and gave us a tremendous amount of privacy. It was make-believe, though. It wasn’t like we owned the woods around us. The lots on either side of us were for sale. We just hoped no one would ever buy them. I had even joked at one point that if I ever saw people looking at those lots, I would come outside in my underwear to get the mail. Fortunately for everyone, that never happened.
As I’m sure you could have guessed, someone recently bought one of these lots, and last week, construction began on a new house. Early on Tuesday morning, a backhoe (I think it was a backhoe) began clearing out the trees on that lot. By dinner time that night, they were all gone. In just a few hours, the look and feel of our backyard changed forever.
We bought our house hoping no one would ever move in next to us, hoping nothing about the backyard would ever change. But that only lasted for a little while. Change was foisted upon us. No one asked if we wanted it. No one asked if we were ready. No one consulted us at all.
As I watched the backhoe (let’s just go with it) smoothing and leveling out the dirt on the property later in the day, I had a bit of a revelation about all of this. In looking at my property, I noticed something that hadn’t really been there before: sunlight. Because the backyard had been so blocked in by trees and by our house, we would never get much sun back there, and our grass always struggled to grow. Now, with the trees gone on the one side of the property, our grass might have a fighting chance.
Don’t get me wrong; as I said before, I didn’t want that property to sell. Even now, if given the chance to put things back the way they were, I’d probably choose to undo it. But since I know that changing back is impossible, I am beginning to see the benefits of this new reality, even if it is just the health of the lawn.
This is a very long way of making the point that we need God’s grace. Yes, grace. We ask for it. We sing about it. But, I have never seen grace come without change, and change is hard. At the same time, I have also never seen grace bring change that was unneeded. The changes happening in the lot next door are a good reminder for me to trust God in all things.
What is the grace in that new construction? I don’t know, but God does.
All I know is that God’s grace brings change, and grace is good.
-Shannon
P.S. Sacraments give grace. Your local Catholic Church can help you receive sacraments.