Just Drifting
It was a perfect day for canoeing.
The sky was a perfect blue, a light breeze was whispering through the cypress and tupelos, and the air was just cool enough to ward off a sweat. My wife and I had left the kids with the grandparents and taken an hour to explore a millpond. We paddled hard for a while, leaving the dock and mill behind.
The local wildlife was restful, too. We saw a stand of cypress full of sleeping wood storks. A partly submerged log held a family of turtles. A great blue heron took off right in front of us, flapping silently between the trees.
After a while my arms were getting sore, and I felt like, I don't know, like I was missing too much. So I stopped paddling. After a few strokes my wife stopped too. In the clear water we didn't stop, we just... drifted. The canoe grew quiet. I started noticing sounds I hadn't heard before. I could hear the water of the millpond slowly moving downstream. I could hear a swarm of water bugs skittering across the surface. I could hear my heart beating, slowing down. My wife turned around and smiled.
Slowly, slowly, I felt a peace I had been missing for some time. As the canoe finally slowed, then stopped, it occured to me that we weren't making any progress, and that was okay. The place I needed to be in that moment was not further upstream, but right there in that canoe, with the woman I love, basking in the joyous glow of God's creation.
We've been paddling hard in other areas, too, and I think maybe it's time to put down the paddle and drift awhile. We're in the middle of applying to work with a missions agency, and it's a bit overwhelming. We're supposed to be writing autobiographies and formulating our statements of belief, but we're so busy right now doing all the other junk I think maybe we're missing some things. Things we need to hear. Maybe things we have to stop paddling to hear.
I don't want to miss the important stuff. I don't want to paddle hard upstream, get to where we're "supposed to go," only to find that the whole point of the trip was being in that place where we stop paddling and just listen. If we miss that, what was the point?
So I think were going to put down the paddles and drift awhile. Stop working on all the missions stuff, for a little while. There will be time for all that later. I think that, right now, just drifting is exactly where we're supposed to be.
The sky was a perfect blue, a light breeze was whispering through the cypress and tupelos, and the air was just cool enough to ward off a sweat. My wife and I had left the kids with the grandparents and taken an hour to explore a millpond. We paddled hard for a while, leaving the dock and mill behind.
The local wildlife was restful, too. We saw a stand of cypress full of sleeping wood storks. A partly submerged log held a family of turtles. A great blue heron took off right in front of us, flapping silently between the trees.
After a while my arms were getting sore, and I felt like, I don't know, like I was missing too much. So I stopped paddling. After a few strokes my wife stopped too. In the clear water we didn't stop, we just... drifted. The canoe grew quiet. I started noticing sounds I hadn't heard before. I could hear the water of the millpond slowly moving downstream. I could hear a swarm of water bugs skittering across the surface. I could hear my heart beating, slowing down. My wife turned around and smiled.
Slowly, slowly, I felt a peace I had been missing for some time. As the canoe finally slowed, then stopped, it occured to me that we weren't making any progress, and that was okay. The place I needed to be in that moment was not further upstream, but right there in that canoe, with the woman I love, basking in the joyous glow of God's creation.
We've been paddling hard in other areas, too, and I think maybe it's time to put down the paddle and drift awhile. We're in the middle of applying to work with a missions agency, and it's a bit overwhelming. We're supposed to be writing autobiographies and formulating our statements of belief, but we're so busy right now doing all the other junk I think maybe we're missing some things. Things we need to hear. Maybe things we have to stop paddling to hear.
I don't want to miss the important stuff. I don't want to paddle hard upstream, get to where we're "supposed to go," only to find that the whole point of the trip was being in that place where we stop paddling and just listen. If we miss that, what was the point?
So I think were going to put down the paddles and drift awhile. Stop working on all the missions stuff, for a little while. There will be time for all that later. I think that, right now, just drifting is exactly where we're supposed to be.
posted by Publius | 10:59 PM
2 Comments:
i relaxed just reading your post!
any thoughts on how to live a "still" life even when we have to do some paddling? that is one of my struggles.
Mentanna,
Thanks for your kind words.
I've been working on this very topic for a while now. I think it's something that affects us all from time to time. What I've found is that my biggest problem is not allowing life to ebb and flow... I mean, you have busy times and slow times. The slow times are there for a reason, to give you a chance to rest and recharge. But when I come out of a busy time, a "paddling" stage if you will, I have to fight the urge to fill it right back up again with junk. Because if I do, then when things get busy again, then I have an extra helping of responsiblity that I have to either bust my tail to get done, or feel guilty about dropping. What I need to do, I think, is let slow times be slow, and enjoy them for the gift they are.
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