The Goodness of an Unhurried Life

the weekend that brought me to worship

Have you ever been in a moment so warm and lovely that you begin to grieve its loss, even as it continues to unfold?

The creeping feeling starts in a place that is deep and knows when something is sacred. It moves up and grows tight around your heart, bringing you out of the moment and into your future, reminiscent self. The one sitting at a desk on a Monday afternoon or reheating leftovers for lunch. The you that is swamped in the reality of the unmagical mundanity¹ of your life.

I hate it when this happens. When the warm glow that hovers over the room grows cold and blue. When you are conscious, deep down, of the truth of the matter. As each laugh and conversation disintegrates into silence, the unmistakable truth becomes certain:

The moment was never meant to last forever.

This past weekend, I lived days I will cherish forever. The kind I will tell my children of as their eyes grow heavy and their bodies soften beneath the comforter.

After three and a half months, I finally got to see two of my very favorite friends from college. Since September, they had been hundreds of miles away, working on a ranch in Colorado.

I leave a better person whenever I spend time with them. Our conversations make me believe that the world is kinder than I would have originally imagined. They show me there is hope and newness in the hard and dark. They listen closely and speak gently. We laugh with our stomachs and savor the silence in between thoughts.

Too often I forget the kindness and goodness of God, that He would give me friends I would never dream of having. But when I’m around them, I am forced to remember the depth of His character.

We drove down East Georgia’s dirt roads until we pulled into the gravel driveway of a log cabin just south of the Carolina border. We pulled our boots on and zipped our jackets tight after tossing our bags onto twin-sized beds. We rode through the pines and across muddy roads with our hair so tangled by the wind it could break a brush. We listened to music I used to hear in the car ride home from elementary school and watched the sun set behind cotton fields.

Our days were long and stretched thin. We spent every waking moment together. We ate in the candlelight and rode horses and listened to the hunting guide's stories.

My favorite part of it all were the in-betweens. After breakfast, we sat by the fire in the main room on red patterned couches. We were full with pecan waffles and chopped-up berries and bacon, so there we sat. Sometimes a thought would come up. But mostly, we lingered in the sleepy stillness of the morning, waking up with the rest of the world. We felt the freedom to be lazy and the contentedness of just being in the same room after months of FaceTime calls and “I miss you’s”.

Life was simple.

I didn’t think about work or the future or set any alarms.

I felt young again. Only when the sun set would we come indoors, smelling like outside. A shower was necessary before a supper so lovingly prepared for us.

The meals were unhurried. We would take small bites in between sentences, nodding and laughing, being fed more by those who sat around the table than the food we ate. The stillness grew as our stomachs filled. Soon it would be time to get up from the table, but no one ever seemed quite ready to leave.

It made me realize what power an unhurried life holds, in all of its patience.

Being outside will do that to you. Being around a table of familiar people will too.

Each afternoon we went quail hunting. We would ride on horses and wait for the dogs to find the coveys of birds hiding in the brown brush. When the dogs would point, a pair of people would walk carefully forward, making as little sound as possible. The dog would then scare the little birds to flight and that’s when the shots would ring. Sometimes a bird or two would go down, other times they would all get away.

There was no rushing the hunt.

No galloping or running. You couldn’t make the dogs work faster or harder or somehow create an algorithmic efficiency to finding the coveys. And there was no matter of precision to ensure every bird would go down.

All you could do was keep moving, until it was time to stop, and then do your best to aim.

Fishing was the same way.

We loaded up my car with poles and a tackle box and set out for Lilypad Pond. We would cast our lines and carefully reel them in, hoping to catch a fish hungry for a fake worm. All we could do was wait, and wait we did, mainly in the quiet. The wind would nip my nose and I would pull up the collar of my jacket, trying my best to guard myself from the cold.

I didn’t get a bite all weekend.

But the joy of patience was refreshing. I had forgotten how nice it was to do nothing by a body of water, staring out at the reflection and ripple of each slight movement. There was nothing I could control or manipulate to catch something. No song to sing or words to recite or tune to hum. Everything I could do had been done, and the rest was in the waiting.

I learned so much from the nature around me. I saw how its rhythms haven’t changed with the heightened efficiency and productivity of the world around it. It knows no other song than the one it has continued to sing.

The sun sets softly and rises just the same. The songbird hums and finds sticks to build its nest. The cold bites and the heat swells. The cotton grows and the pecans too. Hurry is no friend to the natural world.

If only we were the same. Unmarked by the innovation of technology. Unwavering from routine and ritual, finding its repetition to be a bringer of life. Still hunting and gathering and warming by the fire and telling stories and listening and waiting and waiting and waiting.

It’s a life that sounds nice to most. A life that is enticing and refreshing and human. Deep down in our bones, it’s what we all know we need. A release, an escape, ripping the hook from our mouth and swimming to a place where we are not the ones they feed on.

I wish it were that easy. That trading my phone for a landline would work. That biking to the store was normal. That TVs were not the revolving point of every living room and phones did not sit face up on the dinner table.

After a weekend so gentle and whispery, it’s hard to come back to a “real life” plagued with swerving around slow cars and finding the fastest checkout line.

I’m thankful, nonetheless, to be reminded of my humanity and what it craves. To see that God designed me to step into the outside world and be hit in the face with my impatience and stubbornness. To see what I hold onto with white knuckles isn’t actually what I should be vying for. That the peace I want will not be found with a swipe, but a step outdoors.

To see the world as something bigger than I ever could be and in response, fall to my knees and worship the God who saw all of this, and still chose me to be His favorite. To be the one He cared for and loved. For my heart’s response to be a constant hallelujah.

I don’t deserve it all. Or any of it, really. Not the friends and the lazy meals. The birds singing and the horses grazing. The laughter and the listening. The heat of the fire and the sting of the cold. The warmth of the bed and the hug of a close friend.

It’s all too beautiful and too good.

Yet, He has deemed it mine.

Thank you, thank you, thank you is all I can manage to say.

1. From Tommy Dixon’s Essay, “Real Life”