Hi friend,
Everywhere I turned this week there were messages about time.
I celebrated 20 years since the day my high school sweetheart turned lifetime bae first said “we go together” in a Ruby Tuesday’s over chicken wings (boneless for me).
We took a quick trip to Charleston and on the drive, reminisced about how many lives we’ve lived since we were wide-eyed teenagers in a hurry to grow up. We thought about how many of our dreams came to pass, how many things we thought we wanted that we are grateful to have been saved from, and how many blessings we could have never foreseen that blew our minds. How time has been kind to us and our love.
While in South Carolina, we visited Angel Tree, a sprawling 400+ year old oak tree that is so named because it is said that the voices of our enslaved ancestors can still be heard there, angels whispering to us through the branches. Those branches. Gnarled and beautiful, covered in moss, stretching far out into the sky.
As we walked up, a father was walking with his young daughter in the opposite direction away from the tree. He said to her as they passed us “We’re walking on the roots now. They are under us.” “All the way back here?” the little girl asked. “Yeah. It’s been growing for hundreds of years. The roots are deep AND wide. Nothing can knock down this tree.”
We ate bbq that that had been smoked overnight for 10 hours, never unattended. The pitmaster and his sons standby every night, changing the coals, turning the meat, stoking the flames in a tradition passed on from his father and his grandfather. Any less time than that, he said, the meat isn’t done right. It ain’t real bbq.
Every time someone asked us at our hotel how long we’d been together they replied with shock and disbelief “There’s no way y’all are old enough for that. You don’t look a day over [insert # in the late 20s].” The compliment about our youthful appearance made me smile at first. Then it would be followed by a little pang inside as I remember that while still young in the grand scheme of life, I am indeed "old enough for that" . I remember that there are so many things I long for but hav yet to experience or do.
As I wrote about in You Deserve the Truth, I have always wrestled with the clock and the feeling that life is short, having watched my superman of a father die suddenly at 42, with so much more left to give.
I have a friend who is very into numerology. He said to me one day “My numerologist told me that I probably won’t be a public success until after 40 anyway so I’m pretty relaxed”. I laughed as I always do when he talks about his numerologist. But I also thought, what freedom it is to believe that your desired outcome will take time and will happen much later than the world says it should. It's so special to believe
On our drive back from Charleston, we talked about how relocating to the south had forced us to move slower, no longer rushing through the days, anxious for lines to move, cars to move, words to move, life to move. How for the first time, I am appreciating the timing of my life. How I can look back and see that every little thing has happened by divine design. The longer I live, the deeper and wider my roots are. I cannot be moved.
So many of the cliches that sound like fortune cookie promises at first, sound like wisdom the more you experience. That “mother wit” that our mothers and grandmothers used to say with a knowing look. Statements like “the best things in life take time” . As I look at my relationships, my character, my career, my community and just about everything else that makes up this thing we call life, I now know that phrase to be true. Everything that I have endeavored to do has been bettered by time. And the best things are sweeter still.
I brought some of the bbq home and heated it up for lunch the next day. It was juicier than it was the day before.
Give me that.
I want a slow cooker life; A life simmered, full of flavor, steeped in goodness and whatever effort it takes for as long as it takes to be real. My work and my soul will be better for it.
This week, even as the world whips around you, remember that taking your time is your birthright. The dominant culture wants to control your pace and have you live a poorly seasoned, anxious life of quick wins and “optimized” moments. But what would it look like if instead of trying to master time you simply honored it?
Sit in it, be present, and know that with every passing second, your roots are growing deeper in the place that you have been planted. I promise you, it is okay to slow down. Chew your food. Wait your turn. Treat your vision for your future as a promise, not a race.
You’ll get there my friend. Just take your time.
Love,
I. Quote: Give me a slow cooked life.
II. Question: In what areas of your work and life is your obsession with speed clouding your vision?
III. Something Extra: From "De Nyew Testament", a text written in the language of the low country Gullah Geechee people: Me deah fren, memba dat one day een God eye same like one tousan yeah, an one tousan yeah same like one day. (But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is a thousand years to God and a thousand years as one day.)
