We’ve lived in San Diego since 2003. And after living here for about 15 years, I finally figured out how to have the greenest lawn in my neighborhood.

It all started one day when I was working from home and heard a big commotion from what sounded like our front street. It sounded like someone was running a big, noisy motor. My room was on the other side of the house, and I was busy, so I didn’t think too much about it. I just thought the sound would go away. But when the noise came from my backyard right outside my window, I started to get worried. And when I heard someone moving around my backyard, I was scared. I went downstairs, looked out the back window, and saw a guy in my backyard running a motor over my lawn. What was someone doing in my backyard? So, gathering my courage, I went outside to talk to him. Come to find out, he was aerating and fertilizing my lawn without my knowledge or permission. He messed up the address, was supposed to do our neighbor’s, and ended up doing our lawn instead. He apologized, but I got a free lawn aeration and fertilizer job.

When someone aerates a lawn, they run a machine over the lawn, and the machine pulls little cylindrical dirt plugs or “cores” of soil out of the lawn about every three inches. This lets air and other nutrients into the soil. Right after the aeration, it’s messy. It doesn’t look good. One person said it looked like a whole pack of about two hundred dogs did their business all over our lawn. It takes at least 2 weeks, if not a full month, for all the brown “parts” to work their way back into the grass. But 6 weeks later … WOW!! Greenest, healthiest lawn in town.

I’ve learned to do this twice a year. I do it around October, right as the “weather starts to turn,” as if the weather ever really “starts to turn” in San Diego. And I also do it around mid-March, right before our Spring.

And my neighbors are “green with envy” over my lawn. Friends ask me how I keep it so green.

But we pay a price. Initially, the lawn is extremely ugly until it isn’t. And then it’s gorgeous.

And in the Spring of 2017, I was mowing my lawn when the spirit’s distinct voice whispered to my mind and heart, “Larry, you are going to be aerated.” It could have said, “You’re going to be messy until you aren’t, and then you’re going to be beautiful. It’s all part of the process.”

That impression came shortly before I lost my job. Oh good! I will be aerated.

“I am making all things new” (Revelations 21:5).

The artwork is called “To Trust His Hand” and is used by permission from Eva Koleva Timothy