A box, a shovel, and a digging bar

What we carry is sometimes much too heavy to bear. But to set it down is to feel something even heavier, the weight of failure. The path to discipline has required rigor; to stay the course, to maintain healthy habits, to push through pain and adversity. And I suppose if I weren’t so gall-darn stubborn, I would have given up long ago. But the reason I have maintained this course is because I am looking forward to future joy. It’s not pain for pain’s sake. The reward is actually very simple.

I love beauty. I love to look out on an early spring morning and see crocus pushing their petals through thawing dirt. I love when the robins arrive in their flocks mid-February to pick the darkened husks of berries from dogwoods. I love their run-and-stop, run-and-stop rhythm. And if they are lucky, the worms are waking up too.

And that is why I found myself with a box, shovel, and a digging bar on a cool Fall afternoon at the farm we are making near Salem, Missouri. For now, it is only 19 acres of land with the remnants of an old pig pen, a dog kennel, and a platform where a trailer home used to sit. I don’t know what that used to look like. It burned down before we bought it. And frankly, I’ve spent more hours picking up burned trash and aluminum cans than I have building anything, but I have a vision for what it could be. That is why I decided it was time to plant something.

It hasn’t rained in a while and the earth is nearly as hard as pavement. I know from experience the landscape is so rocky it’s pointless to dig with a shovel. One must use a digging bar or pick axe to break ground. I wouldn’t even call it dirt. The crust is clay and sandstone with flint rocks thrown in for good measure – as tough and unforgiving as the hide of an alligator. The process involves lifting the digging bar, jabbing it into the earth, and pulling back to pry. The bar weighs about 14 pounds so it takes a good heft to lift and jab. The rhythm is, LIFT-JAB-PRY, LIFT-JAB-PRY. One must do this over and over to loosen the dirt enough to pull out a shovel full. Then one stoops to pull out the rocks and throw them into one pile while the dirt goes in another. I tried to find a less rocky place to plant, but in the Ozarks that’s like saying I was looking for a less salty ocean in which to swim.

My father recently gave me a great treasure; a box full of iris that had been thinned from their flower beds. I suppose in my mind there is nothing that holds more promise than a box of old bulbs. When I looked into that box, I didn’t see cruddy, brown tubers with little green fringes of growth, I saw majestic purple iris with white frills unfurling. I saw little splashes of yellow on velvety tongues. But more than all that, I could almost smell the sweet aroma of impossible flowers made possible by the mighty hand of an invisible God.

If he could make all that, I suppose I could forge a flower bed from some rocky dirt.

It took about 2 hours to pick out a 4×3 flower bed and another hour to move and scatter dry, rotten wood from an old wood pile into the hole. Only then did I feel the iris had a chance of surviving. I scattered them around in the bed, turned their green edges up, and pushed the pulverized clay back on top. To complete the display, I moved some large rocks around the bed. Then I stood back with pride and began to hope the flowers would grow.

To be honest, I don’t always enjoy this type of work, but I love beautiful flowers more than I hate back-breaking labor.

Why do I share all of this?

I love Jesus but I struggle to love His church. I have encountered some people there that are just as tough and unforgiving as the ground on my farm. From careless words spoken to callous platitudes intended to force me to submit, those sinners have caused some mighty deep wounds. Worse, in my fury I’ve sinned right back at them. I am both perpetrator and victim. But while I know plenty of people who’ve given up on attending a local church, I’m not one of them. The church is the bride of Christ and heaven forbid He return and not find me among its members because I was nursing wounds over something I should have forgiven and let Him heal.

That is why the day after my rock picking frenzy I found myself sitting at the table of a Fall Festival at the local Baptist church. I’ve been attending there for a few months and trying hard to find Christian community. I was there because my teenage son has plugged into the youth group and was out rough housing with a group of boys on the football field, as happy as I’ve ever seen him. But I was uncomfortable and lonely. I knew hardly a soul. And for all the friendly faces, many refused to meet my gaze and instead moved on to their familiar friends. I thought to myself that it took a lot of courage for me to attend, but that didn’t make me feel any less lonely or sad. A few people said hello and one woman stopped to compliment me on my flowery hat, but after years of being at churches where I knew almost everyone, it was hard to stare into a sea of strangers.

Don’t read me wrong, they weren’t rude or unfriendly. And to my credit, I did try to strike up conversations with a few people. It’s just that I don’t know them, and they don’t know me. Relationships take time and work. And if there’s anything I’ve come to realize over the years of attending church, it’s that finding a real friend in a group of Christian people is no different than finding a friend anywhere else in the world. It takes vulnerability on both sides and some kind of conventional commonality. Older people like me, people with old rusty wounds, are much too guarded, which is probably why none of the elderly people at the church would even look at me. It was only the younger women who dared to ask my name.

I remember the adage, “One must be a friend to have a friend.” Making new acquaintances takes time and energy. So why am I wondering if it’s worth the effort? Talking to people I don’t know feels like LIFT-JAB-PRY, LIFT-JAB-PRY. If I plant the seeds of kindness, will the flower of friendship grow?

By the grace of God, it will.

And when I look at it that way, the better question seems to be, “Does anything good happen outside the grace of God?”

I am looking forward to a reward I can’t see. Right now, I see drought. I feel hard ground beneath my feet. I see leaves falls and trees preparing for a cold winter. I smell the smoke from a wood burning fire and I know snow will be here soon. But with my inner eyes I smell the thaw, I hear the robin song, I see the red bud in bloom. The signs of the seasons remind me that the rhythms of discipline, perseverance, and fortitude are the LIFT-JAB-PRY of forbearance. And I know the reward is worth the wait.