Work for the night is coming...

The summer before I entered high school, I began working for money from someone else. All of my work before then had been free child labor for the family. My mama worked outside the home, a rarity in those days, so I was no stranger to working around the house. On Saturday mornings, my sister, mama and I began housecleaning after breakfast and finished by lunch. During the week, beginning at age nine, I started cooking suppers, washed and hung out laundry, helped daddy in the fields with the cows and hay baling, helped daddy build a greenhouse for a tomato growing venture, tended the chickens after school, helped plant and tend a garden with daddy, helped mama can and freeze the vegetables daddy grew. We knew work around the house and farm was not an optional activity. We were required to do our part to help. Summers had free time during the day but the chores remained the same.
Mr. Bland, a dairy farmer in our church, asked daddy if I would like to work tobacco with them that summer. All farmers had tobacco patches for a cash crop in a profession that never sees much cash. Tall tobacco barns with shed porches were a part of every farm’s collection of buildings. In the summer time, those barns were the center of activity for three to four weeks. We watched the stately tobacco plants grow, suckered the plants, pulled tobacco worms off by hand, and prepared for the harvest.
The teen age boys and men would hook up the mules to large sleds with runners and take them to the fields where they would be loaded down with tobacco leaves, handpicked at just the right stage of maturity. The sleds would come back to the barn where the leaves would be unloaded on long, waist high tables, ready to be handed to the stringers. Stringers would wrap twine around a group of three leaves and twist tie them to a long tobacco stake. When the stake was full, it would be hung in the barn, starting at the top, waiting to be cooked to cure. My job was the least skilled work as hander. All I had to do was gather up the three leaves and hand them to the stringer. She worked really fast and it took two handers to keep her going, one on either side of the stake. It was dirty, hot work but it was fun, too. Somebody was always laughing or singing or playing jokes.
Dinner was a two hour event at one o’clock. The heat of the day made it impossible to work in the fields without risking heat stroke so we ate a huge dinner prepared by Mrs. Bland, drank gallons of sweet iced tea, and slept under the shade of the big old water oak in the front yard. Around three o’clock, we returned to work until dark. Riding home in daddy’s truck, I was tired, filthy and sticky with nicotine and tobacco worm innards juice, satisfied with my first real job, good work done the best I could and the paycheck confirmed that.
Other jobs came in my high school and college years. I was a church organist all through high school and college going to Wednesday night choir practice, playing for Sunday morning and evening worships, accompanying the youth choir at Sunday afternoon practices. Paychecks were mine but I was expected to save some and spend the rest to buy my some of my clothes and other necessities of teen age life in those days. Tangee lipstick at McCrory’s, Red Roses perfume by Yardly, stationery from Southern Stationery for my letter writing, that really pretty red wool crepe dress at Martha’s Dress Shop... all paid for by my work.
I began to learn what kinds of work were more than just a job. Some work fed my soul while providing money. If I had to choose whether to work at Sears, as my sister did, making much more money, or work as an organist, music won hands down. Even with the drudgery of showing up for practices and Wednesday night prayer meetings, music could always provide an invisible paycheck for my spirit. The best work always provides meaning and joy even in the midst of struggle and drudgery. Learning that work is good, work can be life giving, work is important, work supports you financially as well as spiritually... all good lessons begun for me long ago in my family.
Daddy and I used to have long, heated “discussions” about my college major. I was convinced I wanted to be a social worker, save the world from itself. Daddy argued for music and teaching as my career choice. I persevered and graduated with a social work degree and actually held two full time jobs as a social worker. In my middle age, I discovered I was a good teacher, a really good teacher, helping people find their creative selves again, showing them ways to explore the connections between the Divine Creator and our own creative instincts. My part time job teaching at our local community college has enriched my life and I look forward to work. Daddy would be pleased to hear me acknowledge that he was right in his assessment of my talents and skills. He did love to be right.
Our children all worked as teenagers... worked as babysitters, worked in child care centers, restaurants. Their money paid for insurance and gas for their cars, a luxury I never had, as well as other items of teen necessity. I watched them learn how to show up even when you don’t feel like it, how to work with a boss, how to form relationships with co-workers, how to manage money, how to balance school, work and play, how to bounce back after you are let go, how to find and keep a job. And now they all have work that matters to them, work they are proud of. Some of it comes with a paycheck and some of it doesn’t but they know the value of all work. I celebrate the work they do and how they do it.
Proverbs says “Commit your work to the Lord...” An old hymn says “Work for the night is coming when man’s work is done.” Work that is made sacred by its dedication to our Lord, work that provides support and meaning, work that helps us find new layers in our soul, work that is not done just to fund us in our retirement but as a gift to the One who works by our side day by day, whatever our work might be... Thanks be to God for all the ways we work whether it be the necessary drudgery or the work that feeds our souls. We are blessed to be able to work.
And now, I have to go to work...