Category: prose

November has rolled around, which means (for those of us in the Northern hemispheric latitudes who experience these distinct seasons) digging tubs of winter clothing out of storage and remembering where the heck you put the ice scraper. In Indiana this year, the frost has come in before the corn has come down; the beans made it but the wind will need to rattle through the tall brown stalks just a little longer before harvest. Rural driving requires reducing oneself from summertime fast-cars-and-freedom speeds to a slow and watchful winding around grain trucks parked on road edges and tractors ambling along as far to the right of the double yellow lines as they can. And when the crops come down and the clouds of dust and chaff stir up, the deer more hastily pick that moment of all possible moments to dart in front of your car — you simply can’t be in a hurry. There are no “New York minutes” out here, and sometimes people are eager to tell me as much.

I do appreciate the slower pace to my days — not just from being in a different state and subculture, but the stage of life I’m in and the work I do to live fully into it. Though I sometimes feel a twinge of “survivor’s guilt” for stepping out of the whitewater rapids of a traditional 9-to-5, I wouldn’t trade this weird and wonderful cobbled-together life for it. Often at the end of an 8-hour office day I would come home with most everything scratched off my to-do list — a mental boost for an Achiever; a tangible set of accomplishments feeding into the feeling of having “earned” the evening’s rest. But these days as I spend a few hours here and a few hours there, a morning in the woodshop or an afternoon typing away at a cafe, a day in the garden with mom or a minute bringing in heavy groceries for dad, I find that my “accomplishments” appear slowly; the cumulative effect of a thousand little things, rather than bullet points that would look impressive on a resume. There are no Key Performance Indices here, and my brain struggles to accept as much.

But again, I would not trade it for all the accolades in the world. I mean…I might try, considering how hard-wired I am to want the win, the triumph, the recognition, the success. Which is why I am seeing in a thousand small ways the reasons God has me here at this place, in this time, for these purposes…I have for so long found my worth and identity in accomplishing things. Sometimes Christians like to point out that “God breaks us down so he can build us back up!” and maybe that’s true, sometimes. But surely not all the time; not as some universal regulation by which He is always confined to operate. I think more often than not, He is far more patient and tender with us than that. At least, He has been with me — even at my most rebellious. A bruised reed he does not break. He declared his own Name to be “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness.” There is no harsh breaking down here, and God is gently showing me as much.

It is, rather, a slow and gentle dying, like the shifting of autumn into winter — when the days wrap us up in a long, cozy darkness and the fallen leaves crackle underfoot as we walk.