3 Things I Learned From Digging A Hole

The past 3 days I spent all day every day digging a hole. 6ft by 6ft and about 5ft deep. It’s definitely the biggest hole I’ve ever dug and yet I was determined to see it through to the end. I was not gonna let sore muscles or tiredness keep me from getting back in that hole to shovel more dirt out. Seriously, I got pretty stubborn with it and would hardly let anyone else shovel for me, but it sure did feel good when we finished! 

We were digging it simply because our host asked us to. The hole is for a pretty large water tank that will store a significant amount of water, considering most of the time there isn’t running water at the house. The water is only on for small amounts of time during the day and those times are not consistent. 

It seemed like a simple task. I loved digging at the beach as a kid, so I figured it would be fun. To our surprise, this was not a simple task as we first expected. It was fun, but it was also really hard work… and God taught me a few things through this task. 

1. Community is essential 

Digging this hole required team work. There was no way I could have done it on my own. It would have taken at least a week, if not longer. I would have gotten tired much faster and honestly, I might’ve given up on it. Instead, I had help from my community and TOGETHER we dug a giant hole. 

We would switch between someone using a pick axe to break up the ground, someone using a shovel to throw the dirt out of the hole, someone using an edger to flatten out the sides,  and people moving the dirt from our pile right outside the hole to another more practical location. While we couldn’t have too many people helping at a time, everyone helped at one point or another. 

Like I said earlier, I was determined to keep working on it, so I did put a significant amount of work into this hole, only taking breaks while someone else was using the axe to break up more dirt for me to shovel out. Even then though, the people who were outside the hole were still essential. A few different people helped with moving the dirt so I wouldn’t have to toss my shovel-full as far (this was tremendously helpful). I had people outside the hole encouraging me, and at one point Micah even played some music on his guitar to pump us up a bit! 

God created us to be in community for a reason. It’s not just for digging a hole that you need people. We need people everyday and for many many different tasks. Thank God He doesn’t expect to do hard things on our own. 

2. Sometimes you need to shift your perspective

We thought we were finished with the hole… only to find out there was more to do. We started out with our hole being 6ft by 6ft. The tank was about 5.5 ft so we measured the width at the bottom of the hole just to be sure. We were just over a foot too short. I was honestly perplexed. It looked like our walls were going straight down, so how the heck was it skinnier at the bottom!? 

From inside the hole, I couldn’t see the problem. My friends on the outside of the hole definitely saw it. They told us that they could see the diagonal walls where we were seeing straight walls. So to finish the hole, we had someone standing outside the hole, right at the edge looking down, so they could guide us in making the walls wide enough. 

This makes me wonder how many times I’ve missed something in my own life that would have been so obvious if I had just shifted my perspective a little bit… 

3. Patience is the most effective tool for stubbornness 

The ground was stubborn. There were layers of concrete, soft dirt, hard dirt and clay. Each layer had a difficulty of its own but the clay was by far the hardest. It would come up in huge chunks that were heavy and a pain to get onto the shovel. The first day we dug about 3 feet. It took us the next 2 days to dig the rest of the 2 feet because of this clay.  After one of my friends used the axe to chunk it up, I would hop in and use my feet to push it all to one side of the hole so I could more easily get it on the shovel and throw it out of the hole. 

After about an hour of working I knew the hole would take much longer than we first anticipated (Courtney thought we’d be done by lunch on day 1). I’m not really sure how long I expected it to take, but NOT 3 days. By day 3 I was a bit over it (but I was still being stubborn and refusing to let anyone take the shovel from me). I was especially over it when we found out we weren’t actually done and we had to deal with even more clay. That was when my patience was truly tested. 

I pushed through… and we finally were able to put the tank in the hole. A truly triumphant moment! 

Recently, God has been revealing to me the stubbornness that I often have in my own heart. I was talking to my squad leader about this and he said “Maybe that’s why you’re in the hole then.” Well yeah, I was being stubborn so of course that’s why… but, that’s not what he meant. He encouraged me to think about the tools we had to use to deal with the stubborn ground, and to pray about the tools that God might be using on my stubborn heart. 

So I did, I prayed and God clearly showed me that His loving patience is the most effective tool He uses on my heart. Sometimes it takes a while for Truth to get from my head to my heart. Sometimes it takes a while for me to trust God and follow Him in obedience. No matter how stubborn I am though, God’s love for me and His patience with me does not waiver. 

Just like the clay was difficult to deal with, I too can be really difficult. Unlike my reaction to the clay though, God doesn’t ever want to give up on me. He faithfully continues to pursue me regardless of how difficult I’m being. He never hesitates to jump into the hole that is my heart, and remove the clay. Wow, thanks God for these valuable lessons. 

Blessings, 

Kaci