the lightest burden

I've been chewing on this post for the better part of October, and a solid friend of mine subtly requested a blog post. So I thought I'd go ahead and put it out there before bed tonight.

I am about to embark on my last week as a seasonal employee of Tree & Leaf Farm. It's been an incredibly intense 5-month experience. I've never worked so hard in my life. I've never felt such negativity directed at me because of my performance, although conditions have improved quite a bit recently. What can I say? I've always moved slowly, just ask my mother. I have to say that I rarely do things I'm not good at, and this commercial farming game is not something I'm naturally good at or, at a fundamental level, interested in (except market... I shall miss you, Mt. Pleasant market!). I've become much faster and a much harder worker, but the feeling of being distinctly less than has colored each and every one of my days here. Almost everyone I've worked with is faster than me, pays appropriate (but not too much) attention to detail, and is more efficient. Every day I see; every day I know. And it's hurt. A lot. It's not been entirely uncommon for me to find myself at lunch or after work, lying on my bed, crying, sometimes unexpectedly. It has not been a daisy walk.

And yet one day early this month, my perspective changed. Like a feather it drifted down to me while I was washing potatoes: Jesus wasn't good at everything either. He wasn't highly regarded and accomplished. He didn't fit in. Most people saw Him as a wacko. Maybe he would have made a slow farm worker too. He was not a jock, not consumed with being a cutting-edge farmer, or proving himself in the market. I'm not sure how to describe how this epiphany has affected me. but it has certainly afforded me some personal freedom, freedom on the inside. His burden is light; His yoke is easy. I don't feel the pressure that I used to, and yet I feel like I'm working pretty well. I still have to work just as hard, but I don't feel entirely driven by fear. Perhaps part of that is the end of the season sweetness- having less work to do, knowing that it's almost over, that I will soon be spat out of the machine. But Jesus has given me a light burden, and I think now I'm beginning to learn how to accept it and live out of it.