I have one of those yards. You know the kind. An amazing array of Georgia pines, unraked leaves and a weathered wooden swing set that has definitely seen its better days. My neighbors are tolerant. They have lived through backyard science projects, overnight campouts and a yellow lab puppy. They have smiled and waved when the stray jackets, backpacks, shoes and gloves that our children use to decorate the “lawn” have encroached upon the manicured spaces that make up our neighborhood. They have even graciously joined the hunt when the match to the ONE PAIR OF SHOES THAT FITS my youngest child can simply not be found in the house, the car, the garage or the confines of the wilderness we call our yard. This has been the greatest gift . . . that friends and neighbors might help us hold on to what truly fits.
The truth is that I have one of those “calls” in life. You know the kind. The messy, carry-you-to-unexpected-places in the world, in work, in family, and most especially to unexpected places in yourself kind of call. I once dreamed of a “manicured call” (and yard!). Lord, give me a call, a mission in life, that would carry me chronologically or even logically from point A to point B to point C. Give me a call and a purpose that I can always understand, one that never leaves me puzzled and unclear about what comes next and where you are in the midst of the backyard wilderness of my life. Maybe I was looking for that one pair of shoes that would fit. The pair that would work for all circumstances, would fit forever and would NEVER get lost under the bed or in the backyard.
Living out call has never been a neat, manicured or linear process for me. It’s been much more like my yard full of pine trees and unraked leaves. A yard sprinkled and sometimes littered with the treasures of my children and the unruly demands of living a life of integrity and holy love in the midst of all kinds of neighbors and all kinds of life circumstances.
Mary Oliver, in her poem “The Turtle,” writes about the powerful, instinctual drive of the mother sea turtle to carry herself out of the familiar ocean, across the treacherous sand and to build a nest and lay her eggs. “You think,” she says “of her patience, her fortitude, her determination to complete what she was born to do-and then you realize a greater thing-she doesn’t consider what she was born to do. She’s only filled with an old blind wish. It isn’t even hers but came to her in the rain or the soft wind, which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.” That then is call . . . not a circumstance that fits and can be lost (in the backyard or in the world of work), not a job or a vocation to be chosen or discerned, but a gate through which I walk again and again pulled by an old blind wish.
Stacey Buford is an ordained Baptist minister, having worked extensively in pastoral care, hospital chaplaincy and building families through adoption/foster care. She lives and works in Duluth, Georgia, where she and husband, Jon, are raising three amazing children.