For Wilshire Baptist Church
A few weeks ago I went out to trim some tree branches and pull some weeds. I was only going to work for an hour or so and ended up working four. I trimmed more branches than I planned because once you get the ladder and the lopper out and start trimming you start seeing more and more that you can do. And then I was going to pull a few weeds and ended up cleaning out a bed that went from the house to the property line. And I fired up the edger and whacked some weeds in the alley. Then I watered a bed that the sprinklers don’t quite reach, and while I had it in my hand, I used the hose and nozzle to zap a wasp nest hanging above a second story window.
After four hours I paused for a moment and saw so much more that I could do, but then the thought came to me: “I’m not stopping because I’m finished; I’m stopping because I’m tired.”
That thought was first placed in my head some years ago while writing a corporate history for McLane Company in Temple, Texas. Over many months I met with executives and managers and then on a series of Saturdays I met with Drayton McLane, the third-generation leader of the wholesale grocery distributor. During one of those conversations, McLane explained that they worked five full days and half days on Saturday and yet the work was never done.
“We don’t go home because we’re finished. We go home because we’re tired,” he said.
That struck me as a good approach to facing many tasks that appear overwhelming. You work good and hard and come to a stopping point, knowing that you’re not finished but you’re tired and need some time to recharge so you can go at it again.
In a way it’s a great relief to know that you don’t have to be finished — unless of course you do have to be finished. There are always projects that have real deadlines that have to be met. A surgeon can’t come out of an operating room and say, “We got a good start and we’ll finish tomorrow.” There are some things that can’t wait for tomorrow.
But so much of what we do is continual and ongoing, and instead of trying to rush toward a finish or deadline that isn’t carved in stone, it’s good to work hard and then take a break to recharge. At the very least we get new strength to continue the work, and with rest and fresh strength there often comes a fresh attitude. And, it may be that in that time of respite we get a fresh idea on how to do the work; we might even see a new goal, a new outcome, a more meaningful finish.
“Finish Strong” is a popular catchphrase right now. We see it in advertising, on walls in locker rooms, on white boards in corporate conference rooms. Our culture tends to translate that to mean finish fast, finish first, finish best – win. But maybe sometimes it should just mean to finish well or finish right, and to do that we may need to step away, take a break, and come back to it.
I don’t know if Labor Day was intended to be a formal kickoff to the fall and winter work season, but the timing of it seems to make it so. It’s the last summer break before cranking up the engines for the busiest time of work and school. Even the church turns the calendar and moves into a season of increased activity with Advent and Christmas looming out there on the horizon.
I spent the first morning of this new work season back out in the yard. I didn’t finish the work because I had to shift gears and take care of another project. And that’s not finished either because I have this weekly writing I do. And even that feels unfinished because I’m never quite satisfied. But I’m tired. Time to let it go and see what tomorrow brings.