Hidden things and light.

lessons learnt from the rat’s nest in our shed.

This was an ordeal to say the least! But the revelation through the experience was invaluable. Enjoy, and maybe a few of you will squirm along with me!

There is no audio recording today because jet lag stops me from being able to read and speak like a literate human 😅

🧡

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There is a rat’s nest in our shed. 

Yes, you heard me right.  

I can’t tell you how much squealing and squirming I did both on the discover, as well as in the process of forming an action plan to rid of the nest. 

Here’s the situation. About 3 years ago our neighbours on the other side moved out¹ and in moved a lovely couple. Our previous neighbours had done up the garden, put in nice new decking and had really made full use of the renovations they had invested in. These new neighbours, however, are just not really garden people, and so the garden is mainly for their dog to do his business and hang out. This made the area underneath their decking an ideal home for unwelcome guests.

For months, I knew that rats were moving through our garden as I could see the holes they were digging from our neighbour’s garden into ours. Over and over, I was blocking the holes and confused as to why they were roaming into our garden in the first place. I suspected there was food or waste in the unkempt garden of the neighbours on the other side and that the rats were using our garden as a way through. After all, we used our garden a lot, it is open and tidy and there weren’t any noticeable areas that rats would want to roam to. Therefore, it couldn’t possibly be that our garden was the stopping ground for the rats… (or so I thought). 

It was very frustrating, but with our neighbours seemingly delayed in taking action, I wasn’t sure what else I could do. The problem was not ours it was theirs.

That was until one day I decided it was time to cut the grass. I opened our little shed and began moving boxes so that I could get to the grass trimmer. 

‘Why does it smell like a pet shop in here? We don’t have any hay… ‘ 

‘Oh my goodness… are those rat droppings?!’

And then, before I even had time to process my thoughts, out scrambled a brown rat. It was petrified and dashed under the fence back into my neighbour’s garden (where the decking was) 

When I tell you I yelled… I mean I yelled. Not a high-pitched, dainty squeal… it was a yell. I ran as fast as the rat ran back into the house and far away from the shed. With the patio door between me and the last seen location of the rat, I rang my husband for backup. 

Voicemail.

Whhyyyy?? At a time like this. Did he not understand that it was a Cat A emergency?! 

‘Be a big girl Anna, you can do this.’

The problem was I didn’t really fully understand what ‘this’ was. My brain was a scramble of adrenaline and irrational nerves, and there was no plan to be found. 

Eventually, I decided it would be a good idea to shake things around in the shed a bit more to see whether there were any more rats. I stood on a chair, took a broom and started bravely shaking things around. 

To my horror, I saw three little rats falling about, all equally as petrified as their mother, but without any idea where else to go they scrambled back into the shed. I couldn’t take it, I ran back inside up the stairs and sat on the ledge of my daughter’s bedroom window sill looking at the shed. 

That was the end of my courage for that situation. There was nothing else I could physically do on my own. 

After a series of emotional support phone calls to my mother, my friend, my husband, and then another friend. I decided to leave the shed open overnight and figure it out the next day.

(I promise this wasn’t procrastination, it was strategic planning time. Okay, it was 80% procrastination but because I was scared).

My husband had some crazy busy days and he promised that he would sort it out when he got home the next day. So all day, I cautiously watched the shed through the patio door. Hoping and praying that there would be an end to this situation soon. I bought rat traps and I waited for the urgent backup that I needed.

Knock, knock, knock… then the sound of the key… this was always the pattern of entry that my dad used when he comes to my house. Only this time I didn’t expect him. 

He was in the area and so decided to drop by and see if I was in. I told him almost immediately about my rat situation, to which he replied that he would sort it for me. 

‘Really? Are you sure?

‘Yes, it is fine’

‘But you don’t have to if you don’t want to, it is not your problem.’

‘It is okay, I can do it.’

*cue Anna’s cry face* ‘Daddy, thank you!’ ‘But wait don’t do anything until I am upstairs, I can’t watch.’

But I did watch, I watched from the safety of the window ledge on the first floor. From that height and distance, I gave birdseye view instructions and squeals to accompany his shed emptying. 

Turns out the rats had moved out overnight. They had decided that the giant intrusion on their safe nesting ground was reason enough to evacuate. 

With the help of my dad, the situation was dealt with.

Praise. The. Lord.

But I learnt something that day more valuable than how to get rid of a rat’s nest.

As I was scrubbing the floor of the shed with bleach and vinegar I felt the revelation and correction of the Lord. He spoke into my physical situation as well as the emotional circumstances that I was dealing with outside of my garden. 

‘You spent so much time thinking that everything was everyone else’s problem, that you neglected to deal with the hidden areas of your life. It doesn’t matter how small those spaces are, so long as there are hidden, unsurrendered areas of your life, there is a space for the enemy to exploit and for sin to fester. Everything, every part of you needs to be open to me. Dealt with and clean.’

Ouch.

Recently, I had a mirror put up to my face reflecting to me a part of my life that I honestly didn’t see as a problem. That was until the mirror was tilted to the right angle. I didn’t like what I saw, but the saddest part was that I had always known that problem was there. I just didn’t think that it was a big enough problem to deal with. 

In our shed was our lawn mower, and in the lawn mower I had left a small amount of grass.

'It’s no big deal, I will throw it away later,’ I thought.

This became a cosy nest for our unwelcome guests. The waste I had failed to diligently throw away the last time I mowed the lawn, became the nest for city vermin looking for somewhere to call home. 

What is in your life that you know needs to be thrown away? What have you failed to deal with? What have you left to fester in the darkness?

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‘For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.’  - Eph 5:8-13

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As time went on and the soft grass, the moist air, and dark shed created a perfect environment for unwanted guests to move straight in.

It is the same with the ‘small sins’, the little areas of our lives left unsurrendered to God, the relationships, the fears, the finances that we keep quietly in the corner. They start of small, easy to hide, seemingly innocent in the grand scheme of our lives. But like attracts like, and as long as there is an unsurrendered part of your life, there is a perfect breeding ground for the multiplication of sin, rebellion… darkness. 

When I was 19 years old, I audaciously entered into a back-and-forth argument with God. Funny, to think that I could argue with the God of the Universe. Loving, that He would entertain my protests like a Father who listens to the protests of His toddler daughter. 

I was protesting the surrender of a relationship. God had kindly and patiently asked, ‘Will you give him to me?’ (him being my boyfriend, who is now my husband). Over and over, I resisted. Until one day, after about 8 months of wrestling I replied, ‘But God you have every other part of my life, can’t I just keep this one part for me?’. 

God, in His loving kindness, replied ‘Anna, you said you wanted to give me your whole life, that means every part of it, even this part…does it not?

The rest of that story is a miracle story that I will tell (maybe) one day. 

But I wonder what would have happened if I answered, ‘No’. I wonder what impact that ‘no’ would have had on my heart over the years. I wonder what rebellion would have bred from that place, what hardness of heart would have formed, what resistance would have grown as I trusted in myself more than in my God.

I am glad I don’t have to know the outcome. I am glad that God asked for that part of my heart. I am thankful that I have seen the love of Jesus in that part of my life.

But back to the rat story…

After my dad pulled everything out of the shed and confirmed about 25 times that there were no more rats, I came down from my window ledge and took over. I took a hold of everything that was unused and threw it away, old paint, old scraps of material, old cardboard and I scrubbed the ground until it was like new. I opened the shed fully to let the light in, stood back and breathed…

‘I will let the sun do the rest,’ I whispered to myself, thinking about the power of the sun to bleach and kill bacteria.

‘The Son will do the rest’, whispered the Holy Spirit. 

The initial exposure of hidden sin and resistant areas of our lives is, by far, the hardest bit. Coming face to face with the resistance within, wresting, then choosing surrender and confession can feel so hard that it seems almost impossible to start. But it is, in bigger picture of things, a very small part. Once the lid is open, the Father is available to help you with the parts you can’t bear to do alone, and once all the rubbish is removed and the lid is lifted… the Son does the rest. 

We don’t have to go over and over our sins, we don’t have to beat ourselves up or await punishment from heaven. No, we sit in the finished work of the cross; we let the Son do His work in us. We lift our gaze, and we let the Son’s gaze penetrate us. We rest in Him; and we trust the transforming work of His Spirit.

‘And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.’ - 2 Cor 3:18

So swing wide the doors, lift the lid, and surrender the areas of your life that He is asking of you.

May all of your heart be soft and open to Him.

May none of it be hidden, resistant, or closed off.

Get rid of the areas that are prone to breed darkness and let the Son shine in.

Let His light search you, purify you, cleanse you and clean you. 

Let the light in. 

photo credits: Becca Booth

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So I am never going to leave grass in the lawnmower ever again. I have learnt my lesson!

But I have also gotten the memo: nothing can remain unsurrendered to the Lord unless I want to provide the enemy a foothold. yikes. Never again.

Let me know what your thoughts are and if you have ever experienced:

1. getting rid of a rat’s nest or

2. God using a simple situation to speak about a much bigger situation?

Anyways, I love being here with you all,

Until next time,

Love, Anna x

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Thoughts from this week:

1. Not the ‘Battle of the Altars’ neighbour, the other neighbour.