For the first time in the life of our family, we have work. Of course, there’s always been work. Floors that need to be mopped, papers that need to be written, that dining room table that I really, really liked but couldn’t afford that we decided to build. That’s all work. No denying that.
But suddenly, we have work. Work that has a hard timeline (fence that chicken yard or you’ll lose another hen to hawks). Work that is dirty (“I think we should build an outdoor shower.” “I think that is the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”). Work that is never ending (done mowing that acre up top? Good. There’s another one right here waiting its turn.).
It’s been good.
Work has a way of reducing any season of life to the basics, bringing it back to the realm of what I must do, and eliminating all of the wishy-washy emotions that our society imposes on just about everything. Not that I’m saying it’s not good to get introspective, or to express your heart. But sometimes… well, sometimes, as my Papaw would say, we just think too dern much. Work strips away the navel gazing and gets you down to the business of doing. Somehow, in the process, it tends to give you the space to solve all that mental gnashing of teeth you were wrangling with, anyhow. Good, hard work is cathartic like that.
Even better is the fact that real work often requires that sought-after “team participation” you hear vaunted in education circles. A project of any real size means planning, executing, and performing together. It means taking the role you’re assigned, being challenged to do something new, or submitting to the fact that you’re not the best man for the job and humbly watching—and helping— as someone else does the thing you wished you’d be doing. You can manufacture this experience in a classroom, but I’ll tell you, the value of dividing up, writing, and presenting a group paper on a topic kind of pales when sitting next to a group of guys aged 8 and up who’ve just come in, sweaty and sore, from driving 6 foot poles into the hard earth and stringing chicken wire taut across them.
Work has a way of ratcheting up any tensions brewing in a relationship and bringing them to a head, too. If you’re holding on to some frustration with the sulky behavior of your teenager, swing hammers together. In between blows, the talking is sure to start. Or maybe you’ll bark an order that could have been a simple, “Would you please…” and that festering wound will be lanced wide open. Either way, you can’t really keep tucking the hot stuff in your heart under the rug when you’ve had to roll it up to rip out the floors. Relationships have a way of being tended to more carefully, in more direct and more purposeful ways, when there’s work to be done. No one wants to hand a saw to a person he’s mad at, after all.
I have to admit, I’m happy that our family’s days now include a healthy dose of heavy lifting. I’m happy that there are things to be responsible for, and physical jobs that get my people (and myself!) outside, dirty, and exhausted by the end of the day. I’m happy that all ages are working together towards the common goal of providing for our family, and that our culture now includes stories about Simon and Jude wanting to be helpful, and Birdie toting nails, and how when you add Daddyman and Mathaus and Jack, you have a team so strong they can probably lift a whole house. I’m delighted that all of us— every member— now looks at just about any building, any project, any job— and says, “Yeah, we could do that.” It’s all possible, we now know. Together. We can get it done, side by side.