One Stone at a Time

I've always been in a rush, I'm afraid. I wait until the last moment and then rush to finish. And even if I start on time, I like to move fast. I don't know why. This kind of living served me well in my 20s and 30s, but not so much in my 40s. This decade I am discovering the beauty if slow work and slow progress. Most of the truly great things in life cannot be done overnight. The great achievements and the really important projects are generally the kind of things that take lots of time. Recently a man in our church led a group of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders to make a path through the woods to the back of the property, lined with stones. They had to clear the land, gather the stones, and lay them. The path is over 300 feet long. There is NO WAY kids that age can be dedicated to a project like that unless they are enjoying the work itself along the way. That's this man's secret. He made the work fun. They enjoyed their times working together and then one day the job was done. Writer and High Calling Blogger Ann Voskamp works a piece of land that her grandparents owned. Every year they gather the rocks that rise the surface. It is a job her parents did and she did and now her children do. It is a job that will never be finished. Her husband said it best. "You do this one rock at a time."

“You picked this field, Mom?” Our 13 year-old future man pants the words, his arms too full, his face red with work. “Every year. This ground’s been picked and picked and picked.” I toss two more rocks onto the trailer’s rising mount and think of the years of gilded harvests before the late autumn rains, the shift of clouds and winds, and white flakes falling, years of warmth returning, and us with it, to work up soil and pick these rocks, rocks, rocks. “Is there a volcano or something underneath this field, just bubbling them up? Where do all these stones keep coming from?” His brother, sweaty, grimy, weary, hollers from the other side of the trailer. He’s kneeling down, both hands gripped to a stubborn one, thin muscles quaking it back and forth. I laugh, motion him out of the way, kick at the embedded granite. “When I was your age, my brother, sister and I, we used to fill trailer load after trailer load with rocks and these crazy dreams of some spray we’d invent to disintegrate stones.”... Read More