To K - It’s his story.
As with all perfectionists, body must be beautiful, and in that sequence, body must be exercised – no Plastic surgery for the True Body Beautiful Believer but Loads of Hard Sweaty Workouts! So there is K, ready to begin his daily grind, but before even that, the environment must be suitably clean and well maintained for working out. Makes sense. How can you prepare breakfast in a dirty kitchen or work out in a dirty gym? Have you ever paid and trained in a dirty gym?? Where the staircase might be littered with gum, the showers stalls are green, toilets stinky, the main gym floor not swept and the weights unmaintained? Nah?.. and you don’t have OCPD!! So imagine K’s surprise when he returns home from work, changes into his gym clothes, saunters into his back yard ready to have a good working out session, but finds his deck literary littered with grass? Now his back yard is enclosed. One way in, same way out. So this was a curious case of where did the grass come from? K said that he was literary fuming as he swept up the mess, because there was no way on God’s Good Earth he was going to pump up, skip rope and lift weights on a dirty deck!
Day two.....
K gets home and once again sets off to the backyard to pump his body beautiful… but like those bad repeat TV shows, he finds grass on the deck. Unfortunately for him, the litter of grass is larger than that of the day before. Incensed, he cleaned it up and looked around his enclosed yard carefully to see if there was any gap, hole or cavity in his fence where a brat-child, a neighbours’ rascal, would have crawled through and dumped grass on his deck!
Nada. Zero.
Day three. On this day he was cautious and walked into the house carefully, after all, some clever prankster has been entering his secluded backyard. And what for? Innumerable thoughts and questions raced through his mind.. Which child is this, whose Child, or which adult, why??
K tells me he almost erupted like Eyjafjallajökull - that volcano in Iceland? Yes that one, K was blessed with a mini-prophecy and himself as the star actor - with smoky ash gushing from his ears miles into the stratosphere - when he saw his deck… because this time the grass on the deck wasn’t a simply scattering, it was a hayfield. OOOH, he thought, I am calling the ‘poh-leece’ on this one!!!! (he lives in the US, where you can call karao’s to your house when you feel your privacy has been violated… unlike Nai where if the Karao’s kuja they do so to violate your rights. Lol).. But while he was ranting and raving and walking around spewing imaginary hot ash into the air he noticed, close to the ground, on the inner side of the deck, hidden away, a bird’s nest.
Have you ever been so annoyed and irritated that you have let your anger over-run normal boundaries, spewed it out and over into the streets and then been embarrassed when you realise that you were blaming the wrong person or you yourself are to blame? K was flabbergasted, stunned, bowled over – as he told me later, laughing and gasping for breath, ‘I would have called the poh-leece on a bird - they would have arrested a bird for messing up my deck - my invisible intruder was a bird trying to build it’s nest.’
Often we are intolerant to those around us, impatient and blinkered towards those who unwittingly or unknowingly fracture or shatter our perfectly organised glass existences. Why a glass existence? Because a single stone thrown through our glass roofs shatters our false sense of peace. Let us remove our tinted Stunners (necessary in a glasshouse) and look at the Bird’s Nest that your neighbour is trying to build. Jesus exhorted us to ‘Love our neighbours’ and I think it is a simple enough rule, until you really get into it. What does that entail? What is Love and who is our neighbour? I think your neighbour is the bird that is trying to build a nest and for a little while messes up your deck.
Your neighbour might be your girlfriend who gets pregnant and gets a baby so now you can’t hang out and party like you used to. That’s inconvenient. Or your neighbour is your hubby who gets a great job in a city 1000kms away just when you got that promotion you’ve been working your (beep!) off for. That’s a nuisance. Or your neighbour might be your best bud who gets a new girlfriend, so there goes your squash/rugby/gym partner. That’s nonsense to you. Messes up your plans and shatters your Glass Existence.
There’s an axiom, a saying that ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’. How true. When going on a diet my doc told me to eat nuts and raisins. My daughter is allergic to nuts… inconvenient, a nuisance, nonsense? K’s bird was collecting grass and placing it on his deck in order to build a Nest. That grass was inconvenient, a nuisance and total nonsense to him.
Love is the tolerance that brims out and overflows considerately and sweetly from within you, understanding that your neighbour means no harm and is just trying to sort herself out. Love is - not sweeping the hay away from your clean deck for appearances sake, but letting it pile up while your neighbour completes their nest.. Loving is - being patient while your friend sorts out his life. Love is - giving your friend time to settle into their new relationship with a nonsensical girl. Love is - taking time to visit your old unwell uncle in hospital even if it means not going for that hot exciting date. Love is the sacrifice of putting aside your own plans and as an alternative getting down on your knees to see what is under the deck.
When was the last time you got down on your knees? If it was today, good. But did you take a good and long look under the deck or just make demands to a Magician god? Tolerance, empathy, compassion. Do you want these words to be showered at you? Then begin by throwing them out first, because it’s generally easier to throw back the words that have been thrown at us. Try it. Call someone a really nasty word today, see what happens (though if they are bigger than you, don’t stick around to watch!)
We have to be full of care and compassionate in our relationships with those around us, teaching ourselves how to be emotionally sensitive to our close friends and family. When I say close friends, include those who are halfway across the world from you as well – especially if you interact with them on a weekly or daily basis through Social Networks. They might have schedules that we don’t know about, or something may have happened in their lives that will disrupt yours, but before you call in the ‘poo-leece’, take a walk around your deck and see what the real story is. Two, clean up after them. But to an extent. You see, once K realised that the grass was being dumped on his deck for a reason, he stopped cleaning up the mess…. actually, it wasn’t a mess, it was building material - you too might be cleaning up and making threatening noises about something which is building up your loved one, shouting and raving at them for being messy or disrupting your perfect Glass Life.
Practise a deep patience that comes from having a close Spiritual walk with the Lord and understanding this: That you are blessed of God, He will never forsake you or leave you, therefore, be at peace with yourself and your neighbours instead of being narrow-minded and bigoted, thinking that the universe revolves around you. No, it doesn’t!! It revolves around God. I often laugh at myself when I make plans and a situation comes up that’s not a part of my Perfect Plan. End of my weight-training. End of thinking about making my body beautiful (pun intended!) and time to get down on my knees, asking my Lord, ‘Now what?’. I will tell you a little secret. When your (life) game becomes challenging, it basically means you’re going up to a New Spiritual Level (read xtreme HARD) of Tolerance, Understanding and Patience – where you will get to practise More Tolerance, More Understanding and More Patience, which means that your neighbour is probably going to spew out a larger amount of Grass on my Deck PLUS the Time Frame will be longer…… the good news is that when ‘your neighbour’ completes their ‘Nest Building Episode’, just like K’s bird - they will no longer leave any mess on your deck and you get to enjoy not only your life, but participate in the new life (eggs) and new growth (baby birds) and new joy that that change brings.
Is Christ trying to renew your Spirit life? Or physically grow your business? or give your soul a new joy? You won’t ever know if you rush to throw and sweep out those who seem to mess up your orderly life. Take a deep breath, relax, begin to really look under your clean pristine life and pray for your neighbour, especially when they chuck large chunks of grass into your perfectly ordered life. 
