I’m our church’s volunteer yardman. So when the deacons put in a concrete sidewalk and drop-off area for the handicapped, they clued me in, because they wanted me to move a few shrubs to make room for it.

The flagstones that made up the former path were no longer needed, so the question became–what to do with them? And that was when the trouble began.

As the official, volunteer yardman, I have some privileges, such as getting to punt any project I don’t want to do. After conferring with the deacons and learning they wanted the flagstones used to widen the main path—a different path—from the parking lot to the front door, I claimed my privileged status and said, “Y’all, go for it.”

And here’s why: I’d reworked this very path 7 years before when its exaggerated curves got to me, because they carried you way out on one side of the churchyard and then way back on the other side before they delivered you to the front door. With the main parking lot directly in front of the main door, having a path with curves as big as your Aunt Bertha’s backside seemed silly: without it, you had a very quick, straight walk to the front door.

But some folks didn’t want a quick, straight walk. What’s more, they felt very strongly about Bertha’s curves, and they let me know about it. So rather than lose them altogether, I simply straightened them a little, so they were less ridiculous looking–at least, I felt less ridiculous when I walked them.

It was grueling work when I was 59 years old to move those thick slabs of rock, even with my grown son helping me, and to set them in the ground deep enough that the mower could get over them, but not so deeply that mud would cover them when it poured.

As it turned out, the person the deacons’ hired to rework this path was the guy who laid out the concrete forms and had little experience with stone work. When I stopped by to water new hydrangeas, I winced for the way he was setting the stones beneath the dirt-line. Rather than shed water when it rained, those stones would puddle–I witnessed it two days later when a downpour came.

Worse, he was laying the stones on the outside of those straightened curves, which made them look voluptuous again. This was the last straw. I found my deacon friends and replaced my glib, “Y’all, go for it,” with, “Y’all, I’ve got this.”

I spent several hours the next day, pulling up the sunken stones with my pickaxe and redoing the rest to include the new ones. It was a giant floor puzzle, and my creative side was digging it. But even though I rolled those rocks along their edges rather than lifted them into position, they got heavier and heavier as the day grew longer. When all the stones were finally in place, I headed home.

Unknown to me, the deacon I’d consulted got started setting those stones the very next day. He called to tell me afterwards and to say he hoped I had them where I wanted them, because that’s where he sunk ’em.

My heart skipped a beat. “Uh, yes, Sam. I had them exactly where I want them, as a matter of fact.” I tried not to say the accusing thing I felt, which was I said I got this. What part of that don’t you get? “The reason I didn’t like what your concrete guy did is he sunk the stones too deep. I’ve just picked up 10 bags of sand so that I can reset them. If you try it, I think you’ll be surprised how easy it is to get each stone level with itself and level with the stones around it.”

I threw in this last part because I suspected he’d not had experience with flagstones either, and I was desperate to clue him in for fear I’d have even more work to redo when I got back to it.

But it was too late. When I arrived two days later, I saw the stones he’d set were below dirt-line, too. I felt sick. All that work wasted. And now, all the work I’d have to do to fix it. This path not only wasn’t progressing, it was sinking and re-sinking faster than I could resurrect it.

I hired Isaiah, a 20-something who sometimes helps me, to work on the path the following Saturday. I figured between the two of us, we could knock it out before church on Sunday. But when I arrived, he said he’d been working an hour and a half already since it was quite cool that morning. With a sinking feeling, I walked over to check his work, and sure enough–he’d aligned his stones too deeply, just like Sam’s.

Lord, have mercy.

So on that day, I not only pulled up most of Sam’s work, I pulled up all of Isaiah’s, explaining calmly that the stones weren’t right. “Calmly” is how I hope I spoke to him, but maybe I had a tiny edge–it’s hard to tell how you’re coming across when you’re going bat-shit-crazy. I also said the stones that had been set weren’t level with the other stones and might be a tripping hazard–someone could catch a toe on a high stone and fall flat.

It was then when I thought of Anne Lamott, who told the story about her little brother who’d been overwhelmed by the number of birds he had to write about for a science project. His father said not to think about them all at once, but to take it bird-by-bird. With small, incremental markers of progress, he knuckled down and got it done.

So when Isaiah announced he had to leave in less than an hour rather than stay all day as planned, I consoled myself with, “Just take it stone by stone,” and it helped. I stopped looking at how far I had to go and focused on the rock I was working on.

Time passed. At 6 p.m., I stood up and looked over my progress. Two thirds of the flagstones were finished, the dirt sprayed off, the usable grass clods replanted. I sent a pic to the deacons to show them it was coming along but wouldn’t be finished by Sunday.

I planned to finish the next week but had an MRI Monday for a nagging shoulder-injury-by-dog-fight and a trip to see a daughter in NC the next day, so after the MRI, I got ready to go, planning to be back in time to finish Thursday.

As I packed, a text dinged. It was Sam checking in to tell me his workmen finished the last third of the path for me. I hardly knew what to say. While I knew Sam’s heart wanted to be nothing but helpful, what I needed was to be honest, “Gee, that’s disappointing,” I texted. “I really wanted to finish it myself.”

Sam texted back, “With the wedding Saturday, I figured I might as well go ahead and get it done. My guys can move the grass piles and seed the dirt patches. Do you want pine straw or regular straw?”

What I wanted was to reach through my phone and wring his ever-interfering neck, but I managed to text, “Regular straw. Thanks for doing the clean up–I hadn’t thought of that.” The other bright spot in the mud I kept getting stuck in is that I had an extra day now with my daughter since I didn’t have to get back to finish the path before the wedding. That was consoling.

So when I got home, I drove to the church to see how it turned out, and I couldn’t believe what I saw: grass seed and fertilizer covered rocks and bare dirt. Pine straw, not hay straw, was laid so thick, it half covered more than half the path, so I couldn’t see most of the stones anymore.

Large clumps of grass and dirt had been wedged between rocks to make good use of them, no doubt, but because there was so much, the stones were now too deep in the ground again. I got out the sprayer to hose everything off, and water puddled in the stones as if they’d never been rightly set to start with.

I sprayed and wiped those stones until I wept, and sprayed and wiped and wept some more. This was too much to bear, and I had plenty to say about it, but not until after I let loose a guttural growl that became a scream so loud I got a headache from it.

“God, WTF are you doing?!!” I yelled. “Where the heck are you?!! Do you see how hard I’ve worked on this for you? Do you care that I’m injured and still, I’m doing manual labor for our church so that your path to your front door is beautiful? Why are you letting it all go to hell?” I hollered worse things, too, but you get the idea.

Our son and grandboys were coming to split wood in a little over an hour. I needed to get groceries to feed them lunch. I didn’t have time to fix another mistake like this one. After hosing off the rocks, I left seething so intensely, I couldn’t even ask my prayer group to pray for me.

The next morning, which was Sunday, which is today as I’m writing this, I read 1 Kings 6-7, the next passage in my reading plan. It tells the story of Solomon building God’s Temple. God reminds Solomon that it’s God himself who will live there. It’s not the residence he’s building for God that matters most–it’s God’s presence among them, 1 Ki 6:11-12.

Peterson says it’s easy to get caught up in what you’re doing for God, rather than to be caught up in God himself, even when doing something grand like building a magnificent, golden Temple with all the bells and whistles. Because the point of the Temple was having God, not having his Temple, (Eugene Peterson, The Message Devotional Bible, p 386).

I couldn’t help but feel an elbow in my ribs after reading this. I want this stone path to be fabulous for my beloved church and for God, but God keeps mucking up the works with Sam’s interference. The way I figure it, I’ve built and rebuilt this path three times now.

But maybe what God wants more than a perfect path to walk on is my enjoying him and getting on board with how he’s walking me along it. Maybe what matters is God’s right to do it however he sees fit, even when it costs me some blood, sweat, and tears.

“Forgive me, God. Help me to slow down and accept this bumpy road you’ve put me on. Help me to see the signs of your love on it.

“There are plenty when I stop to look for them—these beautiful stones, for one thing, and eyes to see and hands to place them, and the healing of my bum shoulder enough to do it, and the joy I’ve felt as I’ve worked with you before the trouble started. It’s a privilege to be trusted by my church to do it. All of these gifts I’ve failed to appreciate in my drive to get ‘er done to suit myself.

“Thank you for the detours and wasted time, because nothing is wasted when you’re doing the designing. I’m guessing you’re more passionate about designing me than you are this path. It hurts when you work in me like this, but if you’re making me into a beautiful place for you, well, please do.”

The extraordinary thing isn’t that I built this path 4 times and spent 30 more hours over 4 more days to fix it after I posted this.

The extraordinary thing is that God spoke the words I needed, and just when I needed them, to pull me out of my path worship and into him that Sunday morning. And he didn’t wait for me to say sorry or to shape up first, either.

And the even more extraordinary thing is that he enabled me to hear him and respond to him with joy and relief—not another pitched fit.

Glory be.

Afterword: I’ve learned since posting that Sam is the deacon responsible to head up the concrete project which includes its side issues, like leftover stones and making sure the path gets finished. Knowing that makes sense of what happened between us. Not knowing it made me cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs there for a bit, but we remain good friends.