I hate being in a rush. I hate the feeling of “go-go-gogogoooo!” that comes with it. Whether it’s that I woke up ten minutes before I have to be at work and it’s a twenty minute drive, or that I procrastinated and have to write a whole paper in one night again; that running out the door and hoping that traffic won’t be too bad and that I’ll catch all the green lights and there won’t be any accidents on the way feeling is the worst. When I have to cram so much into such a short amount of time, it becomes completely overwhelming. But, for some reason, I always seem to do it: rushing here and there, always thinking about the next thing and letting it loom ahead like a massive storm cloud. The thought process is “I have to do this” or be here or finish this and if I don’t … I can’t even think about it! LIFE becomes a rush.
Working on a coffee farm this month has taught me a lot of things. The symbolism game of farming it so strong! But, more than anything, I have learned what a slow process it is. The farm gets tiny baby coffee plants. When the plants are a few months older they’re ready to be planted in larger containers. Then, when they’re about a year old, they are ready to be planted in the ground. And then, a year later, they finally bear their first harvest of coffee cherries. That equates to two years of the plants being weeded, fertilized, moved from under the shade of larger trees to less shady areas, then to the field to be planted – all without seeing any fruit! Every day, my team has done this kind of work and, let me tell you, it is tough.
Because every day, we see such a small part of the process.
We have spent whole days going through rows and rows of baby coffee, sprinkling fertilizer over every plant. Another day on the farm was dedicated to weeding a completely different field of coffee. Today, we spent from 8am -1pm loading 2,180 baby coffee plants into the truck – 600 at a time – so they could be taken to yet another field and be planted. Each day, we do things that seem so small and so simple and so tedious. It would be easy to try to rush the process and move on to the next thing. Why should I have to take my time tossing a baby coffee plant in the back of a truck??
Because, if not, it could lose precious soil if it falls over, soil meant to provide protection. It could break or be crushed or uprooted plant. Then it will never get to do what it was intended to: grow and bear fruit. The task I am doing may seem small and repetitive, but it is an integral part of the plant thriving.
You get where I’m going with this? I see this lesson in the plants and I know it is for me, but DANG is it ever hard to practice. Life has so conditioned me to GO. That if I’m not moving forward in some way – whether physically or spiritually – then something must be wrong. God is teaching me over and over again about intimacy with him and that abiding with him is the source for everything I need, but I’ve got to admit I’ve been getting tired of it.
As much as I hate the feeling of being in a rush, I also hate the feeling of being stuck somewhere. If I hear a lesson once I feel like I should have already learned it. Learning it again and again is like admitting failure. It’s as if I didn’t learn it well the first time. And not just that, I feel like there is so much to learn for my personal growth and for ministry that to keep going over the same thing is a waste of time that I could use learning new things! And not just that, but I look at the lessons other people are learning and wonder when I get to have those too.
I’m trying to rush the process God is working in me to escape “being stuck.” How crazy is that? I’m trading one pain for another! And the ‘pain’ of learning the lessons God has for me is really no pain at all – because it’s solely for my good. On the other hand, if I rush through them, then I’ll have to go back and do even more weeding, pulling out roots that I allowed to grow deeper – roots that are sucking the good things out of me.
That’s where I’m at. God is teaching me – sooo slowly – that it’s not a failure to learn the same thing again, because the lesson will change a little with each iteration. It’s not a waste to sit in one space for an extended period of time, because if I try to cram everything into a space that it can’t yet fit, I’ll miss a piece. I’m just a baby coffee plant. I’m still being weeded and fertilized and moved here and there and all over the Earth. One day I’ll have this lesson down. That day isn’t today.
And that is exactly how He planned it.
