life on the farm

This parable was first shared with me by my good friend John David Walt:

A young boy went to spend the summer on his grandfather’s farm. The grandfather took his grandson to the back pasture, which was covered with brush, trash, weeds and old farm junk. “Your first chore this summer is to clean up this back pasture so we can till the soil and plant some fruit,” the grandfather said.

After the old man left, the young boy looked around at all that needed to be done and became overwhelmed. The pasture was so large, and the brush and junk was so deep, that he had no idea where to begin. Completely overwhelmed, he sat down in one spot and spent the rest of the day there, trying to figure out where to begin.

The next day, he walked back out to the pasture and was once again overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done. He again became paralyised by not knowing where to begin, and so again he picked a spot, sat down, and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out where to begin. This became the young boy’s routine every day for the next several weeks.

With just a week to go in the summer, the grandfather trekked out to the back pasture to see how the boy had done. He was astonished and confused to see his grandson sitting on a pile. Not only had the trash and junk not been cleaned up, but the weeds had grown taller and the brush was thicker. “What happened?” the old man asked his now ashamed grandson. “I didn’t know where to begin,” the boy replied, and he went on to tell his grandfather about his being overwhelmed and of trying to figure out where to start.

The grandfather looked at the young boy with an even mix of disappointment and compassion, and after a small moment of silence said, “You know, if you had just cleaned up the spot you sat in each day, your work in the pasture would be almost done.”

I have come to love this story because I used to spend parts of my summers and most of my holidays working on my grandfather’s farm as a small boy. But I have also come to be bothered by this story… because I am that boy in the back pasture. I have such a great amount of reading, writing and other work to do that I constantly become overwhelmed with where to begin. And I become so paralyzed by my perfectionism that I end up doing nothing, and so the weeds get higher and the junk remains on the ground.

My goal and hope this semester is to renounce perfectionism and simply work in the spot I find myself in each day. As John David has shared with me, a writer writes, and great is the enemy of good.

I hope to have many more stories and observations here and in other places in the days and weeks ahead. Pray for me to renounce perfectionism, clear out this pasture, and grow some fruit.

My grandfather and me heading out on the tractor to work
on the farm during one of my holiday visits many years ago.