Ranch Wife Musings | No One Warned Me

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on 1-28-26

No one ever warned me about this part. It is a part of marriage I never really pictured, didn’t think much about, and for sure no one warned me about. The glow of lamplight in the dark before the sun has come up, when the horizon is just a thread of red in the distance. The steam rising from a hot cup of coffee, and my husband sitting next to me on the sofa. The companionable silence or soft conversation, finishing waking up, sometimes Brad reading aloud from a western memoir, or doing our morning Bible reading together. Sometimes I pick up my crocheting for a few minutes before Little Miss Felicity needs me. These mornings are sweet, and they’re a part of life I never really imagined. The pleasant mundane, the companionship, the not-alone-ness of what it means to be in a faithful marriage. No one ever warned me about this part.

Then the day begins, Brad off to do chores with a parting peck on the cheek and an “I love you”, and for me a daily blur of nursing and diaper changes and naps, on repeat. Somewhere in there is housework, and baking, and writing, and some piano teaching and the occasional morning working cows, and starting to get the garden planned. Little Miss Felicity is no longer a newborn, her little personality starting to bubble up, and it is a delight to watch her discover the world around her. First it was her fists, and she’d stare at them cross-eyed, not sure what to do with them or how to control them. Then it was her voice, and she has been perfecting her repertoire of baby noises and babbling. Then it was her tongue, and she sits with her little tongue poking out, trying to babble around it, sometimes just blowing bubbles, and it melts this mama’s heart every time. There’s a lot of laughter in our house these days.

No one ever warned me about the laughter, or how sweet it would be. No one warned me how many times in a day my heart would melt. No one warned me how fulfilling it is to be needed so deeply. Oh, I heard plenty of warnings, plenty of “just wait untils,” but no one ever warned me how good it was. How good it could be. How good it would get.

“Just wait.” I can’t recall ever hearing that phrase relating to a work pursuit or a hobby, a volunteer endeavor or recreation of any kind. Who in the world ever sees professional enthusiasm or excitement dashes it with the cold water of “Just wait”?  

“Just wait until reality sets in and you realize you’re replaceable at your job!” “Just wait until you’ve been a part of _____ for a few years and realize it is the same as any other organization!” “Just wait until you’re taken for granted by your boss!” “Just wait until your job just becomes a job!” “Just wait!”

We don’t do that. No one does that.

But the “just waits” that flow freely and abundantly and reflexively?   

“Just wait until the honeymoon phase is over!”

“You think you’re tired now? Just wait until you have a newborn!”

“You’d better do ____ now, because you’ll never have any time once the baby gets here!”

“Enjoy feeling good now, because it’s the last time you’ll feel good for another 18 years!”

“Juuuuust wait.”

Hidden behind every “just wait…” is the not-so-subtle insinuation that hard is bad. That uncertainty is bad. That struggle is bad. That change is bad. That’s it’s all downhill from here, sadly, unfortunately, I hope you’re ready for it but I know you’re not!

To be fair, some of those “just waits” are said with little bent of humor, but generally speaking our humor betrays the tilt of our opinions, and we also tend to find what we are primed to see. When I hear numbers about the high divorce rate, the declining marriage rate, and the plummeting birth rate, I can’t help but wonder…what would happen if we talked more about the good stuff? If we primed ourselves and others to look for the best instead of anticipating the worst? Would fewer young people settle, if we talked about how good marriage could be? Would fewer couples throw in the towel if they knew there was hope on the other side of the hard? Would fewer young people put off the joy of having children for the sake of career, only to realize too late that they waited too long? Because on the other side of a struggle, there is growth and strength and peace and the richest of hindsights.

What if we saw the fire of young love and said, “Just wait until the sweet frenzy of honeymoon emotions settles into a state of wonderful steadiness and peace. It is even more amazing.”

That is a “just wait” that gives hope and reinforces joy. And joy multiplies. Hope propels. And the good truly can and does get even better.

Just wait until you wake up next to your spouse for the 100th time, or the 1000th time, and realize you almost can’t remember what it was like to wake up alone.

Just wait until you work through this struggle or that struggle and find your marriage is even stronger.

Just wait until the pregnancy aches and pains disappear miraculously after the baby is born, every single one of them.

Just wait until the sleepless nights fade gently into better sleep and you feel human again.

Just wait until you look down into the gazing eyes of an infant and you realize you’re her whole world.

Just wait until the moment she fusses and you know exactly what it is she needs, and you can respond smiling instead of stressing.  

Just wait until your heart melts watching your husband fall in love with his baby.

Just wait until you smile at your husband across the corrals and he flashes a smile back, working cows with your baby snugged to your chest.

Just wait until you are nap trapped in the rocking chair, with a cup of tea and a favorite book. It’s a pretty sweet gig.

No one warned me about all of that.

Ranch Wife Musings | What’s in Your Cup?

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on 1-1-2026

As you sit and enjoy a hot cup of coffee on this first day of 2026, poring over the contents of this wonderful, small-town paper, your dog, whom you generally love, comes up next to you and sticks her nose under your elbow in a friendly bid for affection. Up goes her nose, up goes your elbow, and everywhere goes the scalding hot coffee. 

Why?

Our first instinct, of course, is to blame the jostle (or whoever or whatever caused it) for the coffee excitement. But the fundamental reason coffee came out of the cup is because coffee is what was in the cup. If you had been sticking to your New Year’s resolutions and drinking water first thing in the morning, water would have spilled out. Tea, and tea would have spilled out. Less coffee, and maybe nothing would have spilled or only a few drops.

The problem really isn’t the jostle. The problem is the contents of the cup.

Every time an old year fades away in the rearview and a New Year approaches, unfolding before us with all of its newness and freshness, life begs to be assessed, and although some scoff at New Year’s resolutions, I think we miss a wonderful opportunity for change if we fail to at least do some self-reflection, taking stock of the old year and making some goals for the new one.

We’re pretty good at a cursory, surface-level assessment, tending to zero in on things like a number on the scale or a dollar amount in a savings account, things that are pretty non-threatening, not overly challenging, and not overly crushing if we fail. We tend to focus on things that inflate our own egos, reinforce our sense of self-importance, and have no real lasting benefit for anyone.

So I’m going to assist us in this meaningful self-reflection by posing a question: What is in your cup? When you get jostled, what comes out?

Because the jostling doesn’t lie. Whether the jostle is someone who cuts you off in traffic, or hitting every red light on the way to church, getting stuck in the longest checkout line at the store, or clumsily dropping something and making a mess.

Oh, you don’t relate to any of those? How about your crying baby at midnight after three hours of walking the floor, or the spouse who fails to respond to you in just the right way, or the cow that cuts back and jumps over a fence and spoils the gather?

Still nothing? Okay, the boss that patronized you in front of your coworkers, the morning alarm that had the audacity to go off, the wrong man in political office, the toothpaste you got on your shirt as you’re running late to an appointment, the chair that stubbed your toe, or the dog that got into the garbage.

If somehow none of these ring a bell, I promise you’re not exempt. Use a little creativity and come up with a few jostles just for you.

We call those jostles, those circumstances that provoke a response, “stressors.” Annoyances. Provocations. Some of them wouldn’t annoy everyone. Some are just sort of innately annoying or inconvenient. But it is the response that is key, not the stressor. If a stressor is applied and something ugly spills out, the issue isn’t the stressor. The issue is that something ugly was in there to be spilled out in the first place. All of us have those stressors, because ultimately all of us have ugliness in us that, given the right provocation, will spill out.

So I ask again, what is in your cup? When you get jostled, what comes out of you? Is it ugliness and spite? Or is it goodness and graciousness? Is it profanity and vulgarity? Or is it tempered words? Is it anger or gentleness? Is it bitterness or forgiveness? Is it hate or love? Is it stinginess or generosity?

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he gives them this list that he calls the Fruit of the Spirit: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Self-control rounds out the list of virtues, reminding me that with all the virtues the precede it, there are still parts of us requiring restraint. There is still something there needing to be controlled. There is an ugliness needing to be rooted out.

So, when you get jostled, what comes out? When you get cut off in traffic, does your heartrate spike and you see a little red, and do you yell into your windshield? When a cow acts like a cow when you’re working cows, do you respond with anger and vulgarity, maybe even taking it out on those around you? When your spouse fails to respond just so, do you respond with bitterness and resentment? When you stub your toe, do you spew profanity? When your alarm goes off and you weren’t ready for the day, do you grumble and grouse as you leave the house? What comes out? If it came out, it is fundamentally because it was in there, not because you got jostled.

What would it look like if we all examined the contents of our cups, and then did something about those contents? The contents of our cups are often a direct reflection of what we are actively (or passively, without thinking) pouring into them, in the form of social media, entertainment, and the company we keep, for instance. Sometimes the contents reflect not so much what we’ve poured in, but what we’ve failed to root out.

What if we determined to change what we poured in? What if we poured in so much goodness that there wasn’t room for anything else? What if we were so bathed in the goodness of God and His Word, what if we were so filled with the Fruit of the Spirit, what if we so filled our minds and hearts with good words, kind words, true words, loving words, that when jostled that is what came out?

Would the end of 2026 look any different than the end of 2025 if you were to fill your cup differently? How would it change your relationships? The peace in your home? The dynamic in your family? The strength of your marriage? Your performance at work?

What’s in your cup?

Ranch Wife Musings | Welcome to the World

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on Nov. 5, 2025

When I struggled into my once-baggy sweatpants on Wednesday last week, the only thing left that was comfortable at 9 months pregnant and warm enough for working cows on a cold morning, I heard a seam pop and may have almost cried. Baby wasn’t due for another week and a half, and I knew that could mean three or three and a half weeks, and frankly I was just over it. Everything hurt, nothing fit, and I couldn’t reach down to tie my shoes. Heck, I couldn’t even see my toes if I looked down.

“Do you think you’ll make your due date?” Brad would ask occasionally over the last few weeks.

“Absolutely,” I’d reply with just maybe an edge of frustration, or disgruntled resignation. “One hundred percent, yes.” The last month of pregnancy really is as long as the first eight, with the shortness of breath and fatigue and back pain and everything else that is just a part of the miracle of knitting together a life, a little tiny human. I’d think about another four or three weeks and balk. But then I’d feel the kicks and the jabs and the rolls, all the sweet little movements that help bond a mama with her unborn baby long before they get to meet face-to-face. What sweetness. What a special time.

Part of me really wasn’t ready for that to be over. However, it isn’t like I had a choice, one way or the other.

Well, not even 72 hours after the sweatpants incident, in the peace and comfort of our home, I was handed a slippery, sleepy little baby with a head full of blond hair, the same baby that had been kicking and jabbing and sitting on my bladder for the last number of months, the same baby that had left me with sore ribs and a body image crisis, and I fell in love. Felicity Mae arrived a week early, and has stolen our hearts.

Those first few days are funny, and confusing. The sleepy, slippery baby that you’re supposed to just know how to care for transforms into a sneezing, pooping, crying, hiccupping, burping little package, and just when you think you’re at your wits’ end, you fall even deeper in love. And somehow there is God-given instinct that rises up and you do, you really do, know what to do.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods, women have. And men, too, honestly. We’ve been told that an unborn baby isn’t a baby, for starters, or at least isn’t human, and that their humanhood depends upon the desires of his or her parents. We’ve been told that children are an inconvenience worth sacrificing on the altar of self. We’ve been told to intentionally postpone children until the important, fun stuff has been accomplished, like that random dream vacation to Antarctica. We’ve been told that choosing to have children will destroy your life, or everything that makes your life worth living, like your career and your body and hot dates and good sex and your own personality, and social media is rife with influencers trying to convince others that self-centered loneliness is superior to self-sacrificial love, and that getting to have brunch with your friends and pamper your pet or your houseplant will bring more happiness than seeing the purest form of trust reflected in the eyes of a 48-hour-old infant, who is half you and half your faithful spouse and wholly a unique person created by their loving Heavenly Father. Mind blowing.

I can’t tell you how many times I have counted her tiny fingers and toes and gazed at her little blossom of a mouth, and then looked up at Brad and said wonderingly, “She’s mine…This is MY baby!” Honestly, I’ve never really cared about babies. Just being brutally honest. I could be excited about them in a very general way, and very happy for the very happy parents, but I never felt inclined to hold all the babies or found myself pining for baby snuggles. Older children, I could enjoy, but someone else’s crying, pooping, angry baby that I had no idea how to soothe because it wasn’t mine? No, thank you, you can keep it, it’s yours.

But this is like absolutely nothing I’ve ever experienced, and nothing could have prepared me for the sweetness and the wonder.

Oh, I know all the negative “yeah, but’s”, insinuated in the wealth of comments told to expectant parents beginning with the words “just wait until.” I know the tendency to focus on the frustrations and the challenges and the outright pain and discomfort of children and family and life in general. Is there some truth there? Of course there is.

But I wouldn’t trade this for the world. Any of it. Not the popping seams or the back pain or hobbling around in a postpartum daze wondering if I remembered to eat, or deciding whether I have the energy to walk from one end of the house to the other. I wouldn’t trade any of it.

Welcome to our family, baby girl.

Ranch Wife Musings | Tangled Lives

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on October 8, 2025

Recently I had the blessed opportunity to revel in the company of some two dozen other women, fellowshipping together in a sweet time of encouragement and camaraderie. As I looked around the room at all of their faces, old and young, all walks of life, I reflected on how we had met. How long ago. Our shared histories. How our lives had intertwined over the years. How God weaves individuals together into an amazing tapestry called community.

Community. History. Belonging. Friendship. Isolation. Loneliness. As seemingly connected as we have become as a society, with easy access to hundreds or thousands of acquaintances through a handheld device, with the ability to communicate instantly and share bits and pieces of our lives with the world, you’d think that loneliness would be a thing of the past. The past – you know, back when communication was slow and travel was slower. Yet today we are more disconnected than ever. At no other time in history have we been able to converse with people across the globe with the mere tapping of our fingers on a keyboard, and yet the cultural sense of a local community is anemic at best. Phrases like “epidemic of loneliness” are tossed around almost with nonchalance, and who is in the least surprised by high percentages of people, young and old, experiencing the pain of loneliness?

But how did we get here? And what are we doing now to perpetuate it?

We can look back 200 years and see the slow degradation of the family unit, in the name of efficiency and modernism and industrialism, that removed families from their farms, fathers from their homes, and children from the care and instruction of their parents.

We can’t change what happened 200 years ago or 50 years ago, but we can recognize unhealthy patterns that are being perpetuated through choices made today.

Choices such as relegating to second or tenth place the things that used to give life meaning, like faith and family and marriage and civic responsibility, in favor of financial stability and a coveted career. Those second or tenth place things are seen now as the icing on the cake, nice but wholly optional. Professional development takes precedence over personal relationships any day of the week.

Choices such as separating life from work. We no longer live where we work or work where we live, to give a nod to author Wendell Berry. We have separated work and life, and give most of our best energy to our work, leaving little for life, and wonder why our relationships struggle. Few people live in one place long term, let alone for life, oftentimes choosing career paths that move them hundreds or thousands of miles, then struggling to engage and put down roots.

We have chosen for church to only inconvenience us on Sunday mornings, if that, preferably demanding no more than 45-60 minutes of our time, and we’ve slowly chiseled away at the many ways that church life and daily life would intersect and interact, allowing recreation, sports, and misapplied “rest” to rise in importance and priority.

Granted, there are nuances to this broad topic that simply couldn’t be fully explored in a book, let alone in a newspaper column, but I see patterns of choices that our society encourages people to make, and the breakdown of community ceases to be a mystery. It is a series of little choices that led to and perpetuates the breakdown, and I honestly believe that a series of little choices could help us to reclaim much of what has been lost.

Choices, like intentionally instilling in our children the importance of marriage and family. Instilling in them and cultivating in ourselves the importance of faith and civic responsibility. Committing ourselves to our local churches, more than just on Sunday mornings. Choosing to be a neighbor to our neighbors. Choosing to sacrifice financially for the sake of relationships and long-term effects on family and community. Choosing a simpler life. A less lavish life. A life that allows for greater flexibility and time outside the office.

I have experienced loneliness over the years. Deep loneliness, feelings of isolation and depression. And I can look back and see how my choices were perpetuating those things, how my career and life choices were hindering, not helping, my ability to form meaningful relationships and connections. And then I look at where God has brought me, at where I am now.

As I looked around the room at all of those dear ladies’ faces, representing several different occupations and vocations of wildly different sorts, two different church congregations, and other delightful chance encounters over the last 10 years, I was blown away. Blown away at how God brings people together, allowing them to bless one another, allowing relationships to form and strengthen. Blown away at the happenstance crossings of paths that have led to years-long friendships, the role models of childhood who have become dear friends in adulthood, women who cared about me and took me under their motherly wings.

And it made me so very thankful for the tangling of lives that creates a strong and vibrant community.

Ranch Wife Musings | Getting Heavy

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on Sep. 3, 2025

When you live and work on a cattle ranch, pregnancy and birth and mothering are just part of a way of life. Baby animals are nearly always underfoot, from the litter of kittens down in the barn to the pile of cowpuppies birthed in our mudroom, to the comical confusion of a handful of broody hens all trying to raise the same chick.

And of course, last but not least, there is the cowherd itself. At any given time, minus approximately 3 months in the spring, there are several hundred pregnant animals on the ranch relying on us for their wellbeing. Their prenatal care consists of ultrasounds and good feed, and their obstetrical care is based on age and risk factors. The heifer herd is watched vigilantly and with much anticipation in the days leading up to calving, while the older, maternal herd is allowed to calve on their own, unbothered and untouched unless absolutely needed, where instinct, nature, and nurture results in a wonderful success rate for live births and healthy babies. You get used to observing and remarking upon a cow’s mothering abilities, the state of her udder, and her maternal instincts. Pregnancy and birth are just a part of life on the ranch.

And it is fun, truly, to watch the cows put on a layer of winter fat over their round, pregnant bellies, as their due dates approach. A cow late in gestation is referred to as “heavy bred,” or, for short, “heavy.” So, you might observe a cow that has that giveaway waddle and maybe even a bit of an uncomfortable look on her bovine face, the cow with a spherical aspect if she is facing you head-on, and remark to yourself or your general audience, “Boy, she’s getting heavy.” 

I suppose everyone’s perspectives are shaped by what we know and what we see in our day-to-day lives, but I do recall being vaguely shocked when I first heard my husband refer to one of my expectant friends as “getting heavy.” This was a few years ago, and was one of those pivotal, eye-opening moments as to what sort of situation I’d married into.

It wasn’t long afterwards that I cornered the dear man and informed him in no uncertain terms that, if I ever was pregnant, if he ever had the absence of mind to refer to me as “heavy,” I wouldn’t be speaking to him for a very long time.

Yet another time, again keeping in mind that our perspectives are shaped by what we know, I was sitting in church next to my father-in-law, bless his heart, at a time when somehow just about every female at church between the ages of 20 and 40 was pregnant, and I heard that man mutter to himself not quietly enough, “Gosh, it’s like being at a bred heifer sale!” My eyes popped wide open and my jaw must have hit the floor. We had words.

So, let’s just say that by the time I found out this spring that I was pregnant, I wasn’t at all blindsided by the commentary I would be personally subject to, from not-vague-enough references to getting the calving shed ready or saving money on the ultrasound, or any other similar sort of comments that are accompanied by a provocative, irritating million-dollar grin from my husband and met with a narrow-eyed glare from me. So, I wasn’t blindsided.

Early on, though, I discovered what I refer to as “selective chivalry.” Pretty quickly I was grounded and not permitted on horseback anymore (a wise decision, I admit), and I found myself watched like a hawk, every move oh-so-chivalrously scrutinized, and hearing a warning or stern, “Laura…” if I did something that was deemed risky or “too much” for my “delicate condition,” as my father-in-law likes to say. He has a way with words. “Laura….” I can’t tell you how many times I heard my name uttered in that tone. “Laura…..”

However, if I was putzing along cautiously on a four-wheeler behind a bunch of cows, staying carefully on the flat and taking absolutely no risks, and the front of the herd got a wild hair and started running? Then I’d hear yelling and tune in to realize it was my name being hollered, very different from the cautionary “Laura…..”, and see some less-than-chivalrous flapping of arms way off to the side, that sent me zipping across the rock-strewn pasture like a skipped stone on a pond, to reach the front of the herd in time to turn them in, muttering to myself, “Sure, right, this feels WAY safer than being on horseback.”

Over the last few months, my husband has learned very personally and poignantly the reality of what happens when your best ranch hand gets pregnant, as tasks have been removed from my repertoire, one-by-one, starting with horseback work, and then close-quarters ground work with cattle, then certain vaccines, then all vaccines, and pour-on fly sprays and pesticides. Perhaps I resented or resisted the bubble wrap a little at the beginning, but I’m realizing it is actually kind of a nice gig, being the pregnant lady, poking cows into the chute for a couple hours (the only job remaining to me when we work cows), and then getting to eat snacks and call it a day. Not bad. Not bad at all.

But the more weeks roll by, the more I sympathize with that heavy-bred cow who has the telltale waddle and that bland, unimpressed, slightly-pained look on her face. “She’s getting heavy.” I feel it, deep in my cells.

But I’ll never tell my husband that. And he’d better not say it either. 

Ranch Wife Musings | A Worthwhile Pursuit

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on Aug. 13, 2025

After months of tending and cultivating, my garden is beginning to release all the vibrance of its bounty. Peppers nearly a foot long (really!), cucumbers and beans, herbs, tomatoes, squash and a little sweet corn. After months of watering and weeding, picking bugs and pruning, my countertops, crowded with bowls of fresh produce, are finally starting to show evidence of the work that came first. Mason jars of fresh cut flowers, dahlias and zinnias and black eyed Susans and bright pink penstemon, grace the tables and the corners of counters not covered in produce in rambunctious if not exactly artistic displays.

We live in a culture that tends to idolize two things: money and leisure. Granted, money can be the means to leisure, but oftentimes people will run themselves into the ground working a job they don’t even really like in order to have money to have leisure later.

There is an overarching idea implicit in this: It is that work is only a means to an end. A necessary evil. Work and toil are means to status, or money, or future leisure, or power, but have no inherent value in and of themselves. Our culture sees the end as the goal, not the process, or the journey, or the growth and even failures that come before the goal is met. Culturally, we value the result, but often we fail to see the value in the inputs, whatever those inputs are. They are only seen as valuable inasmuch as they are the means to the coveted end.

That bouquet of flowers on the countertop, then, or the bowl of fresh cucumbers, those are the end in sight. Everything else, culturally speaking, holds no significance. The weeding and tending and watering? Simply a means to the end, which is the fresh cut bouquet or the bowl of produce. So, we devalue the bulb or the tiny seed, the hands that planted and worked the dirt, the process of nurture required to achieve the flower. The time and effort are just necessary evils. If we could, we’d rather skip right to the flower, and leave aside the care and tending, the watering and pruning and weeding. We fixate on the end result, rather than enjoying the process as the flowers sprout and grow, set buds, and bloom a rainbow in the garden.

This thought process permeates so much of how we view life. Relationships, families, health, vocation, all fall victim to this mentality that wants the results without placing value on and appreciating the work itself.

We want to experience good health and longevity, but would rather forego the necessary work and dedication and self-sacrifice and discipline, the sacrificing of convenience and personal gratification. If we could have the health and longevity without personal discipline, I think many people would take it. But isn’t there value in the discipline, in suspending instant and constant gratification?  

We want the fulfilling marriage, but we would rather leave aside the relationship-building, the cultivating and tending, the intentional growing together spiritually and emotionally and relationally, experiencing failures and setbacks, learning each other, asking forgiveness, and purposely seeking oneness. If we could have the fulfilling marriage without the work, I think many or most would take it. But isn’t there value and sweetness in the process of growing a healthy marriage?

We want to feel part of a community, a sense of belonging, without doing any communing, without sharing and meeting needs, without working shoulder to shoulder and sharing in fellowship. We want the blessings of community without the beautiful burdens that make up community. If we could have the sense of belonging and the sense of being known without the sweat and the work, I think many or most would take it. But isn’t there value in the sweat and the work, the sharing and meeting needs?

What twisted sort of thinking got us here?

Would my satisfaction in a vase of home-grown, fresh-cut flowers be greater if I hadn’t spent weeks and months nurturing the plants?

Would my marriage be sweeter or my happiness in it be more complete if there was never any need for growth, asking forgiveness, and making changes, in a process that lasts a lifetime?

Would contentment in community be greater without all the messy sharing of burdens and life and sweaty work shoulder to shoulder?

I think the answer is pretty clear.

Because the value is not just in the bloomed flower, or the sweet marriage, or the health and longevity, or the vibrant community. The value is in the work itself, the process of growing and changing.

Some of it might be cultural laziness or human nature, wanting the benefits or results without the work. Some of it might be the helter-skelter life we’ve conned ourselves into, where we see any ask on our time as impinging on the “important things.” Maybe it is our social media saturated culture, where we see and share successes and goals achieved, and live in and perpetuate a delusion of thinking that everyone else is accomplishing that coveted end result, whatever it is, without months and years of work and sweat and tears.

But you don’t get to enjoy the fruits of a healthy community without work put into that community.

You don’t get to enjoy the sweetness of a healthy marriage without work put into that marriage.

You don’t get to enjoy the satisfaction of homegrown flowers or fresh tomatoes without time spent tending the soil, replenishing nutrients, planting the seeds, cultivating the little plants, and tending to them through the growing season until harvest.

So, plant the garden. Cultivate your marriage. Build relationships in your community. And buckle down and do the work.

Don’t lose your love of the process in chasing after the end result. Don’t short circuit the benefit of what is happening now for what you hope will happen in two years or ten years. Don’t fixate on the goal such that the process itself goes by in an unrecognizable blur. Because it isn’t just the end result. The pursuit itself is worth it.