Devil’s Lake

The weather makes our retreat a resort—partly cloudy and breezy every day.

We ride into town

Snaking through the middle of a lake,

The narrow path of trees and foliage that winds from Spirit Lake,

To the side called “Devils Lake,”

To the Wal-Mart by-pass.

We buy paint and personal necessaries,

Spirit Lake

Returning to “Spirit Lake” with its gravel roads, one-story dwellings

A water tower brightly lettered “Spirit Lake.”

At the guest house paint project I unscrewed the switch plates

Found some paint guards to help painting clear boundaries.

Moved on to  laying tar paper on a small connecting roof

Not a radically-skilled operation, but demanding to measure

Grateful to MP for measuring and cutting.

Tomorrow’s adventure:  laying actual shingles.

 

Finding Footprints

How do we see “God’s footprints,”

Individual routine moments or silent struggle,

Without drama?  What is the difference

Between a job merely well done and a job graced by God?

It’s what you think happened, more than what happened.

To the casual observer, it is a struggling soul, persevering to the end.

To the soul , it is moments that could end in frustration, then are detoured to success.

My ability to put on a roof is nil,

With a willingness to ask for help and not get annoyed when the answer

Is not within my grasp, something special has happened.

Grace or force  of will are two different ways to see accomplishment.

 

“Neither,” the cat,  jumped onto the powered garden cart/trailer

Rode across the front lawn

To the short stretch of roof we will shingle today

Probably disappointed she had such a short ride, but I enjoyed her company.

Mike painstakingly showed me how to load the electric nail shooter and fire away.

When I took my first shot up on the roof—nothing, then nothing again.

We started pounding nails the old-fashioned way

Mike showed up, tinkered with the pressure, and voila! I was shooting nails.

With Mike’s guidance and MP’s cutting the shingles for the edges,

The work went smoothly.

I had only to line up the shingles and shoot them.

Never mind the sun, the sweat, the up and down on the ladder,

The hydrating, the nail shooter that would not reload once it was emptied,

The roof got shingled. Every bit of it grace, even the sweating part.