You’d think it was just a rock.
“I may want to drive around and look for rocks tomorrow.”
🤔
My husband and I moved to PA after living in his home state of North Carolina for a long time. It’s uprooting to leave the connection to “home.” Scott has cozied up to Pennsylvania in a number of ways. I knew it was a matter of time. Moving is hard, but Pennsylvania is like a surprise party waiting around the bend. For people who finally make the trip to Chester County, PA…it’s landing in Philly and then…
“Surprise🎉”
The unexpected beauty of this place is quite magical. I knew Scott would love the history here, buildings from the 18th century holding centuries of stories. I was sure he would be drawn in by the charm of the leafy trees spreading their canopies over the winding roads. I knew one day he would make the “long way” the regular way. In time it would be automatic to stop with all the highway options and choose one of the many roads that hug the Brandywine River. I knew at some point he would drive, just to drive…and eventually stop, sit and look, park his car at some view and make it his spot. Pennsylvania enchants.
But rocks? I didn’t anticipate he would ever include rock excursions as part of his life-giving weekend plans. But this was my reality a few weeks ago.
It’s not new, Scott notices rocks. What does he notice? What makes him pause to gaze at one on the side of the road? Good questions. He is a gardener. Flowers he loves, pots he loves, tending to, nurturing, and laying them out by color and contrast, this is what delights Scott. Part of his yard-canvas includes rocks…they always look so good placed just so.
This particular weekend, he got into “find-a-rock-for-the rock-garden-mode.” That mode is no joke. It’s another gear, my friends. It’s a gear I don’t have.
This is how it goes. It begins in his imagination, and it spins and turns with pictures, plans and ideas. Then “problem-solving” kicks in and the mounting energy mushrooms as he scurries around looking in drawer, closet, basement, and shed. Like a reel on 2xs speed. It’s all in a matter of minutes while I try to read on the couch. 🤓
I guess this day wasn’t totally unexpected. Scott has commented on the rocks in our area on the regular. Oh and I have heard his rock stories over the years,
“When I lived in Charlotte with Clay and Jeff, I took a wheelbarrow down to the greenway and hoisted that huge rock into our yard by the tulip magnolia. I wheeled it all the way back to the house down Tryon Street.”
I don’t get it.
I just don’t have the same thing for rocks; however, once he does his magic, I love them. This day was in sync with who I know this man to be. A lover of natural things; a wizard in the garden.
So out we went. This part of Pennsylvania has massive outcroppings of rocks and boulders formed from the intense geological pressure over time—quartzite and limestone to name a few. The homes have been standing strong and solid because of these stones since before George Washington wandered here. For a rock-lover, however many there may be, this area is a goldmine.
I directed him to Beagle Road that I discovered after a delightful snowfall one day when school was called off. I was driving around looking for birds. I knew it would be a spot with no people and lots of rocks. As we crept along the curvy, one-lane road that stood high above the Brandywine River, I noticed the catbird song; Scott had his eye on the outcroppings.
“There’s a perfect one! But it’s too far off the road.”
There were so many lodged in the ground back into the deep woods or along the bank of a creek, too far to get to the truck. Soon, I was starting to scout. As we inched 10 miles an hour, eyes alert as if looking for Sasquatch, I saw the perfect rock. I really need to take credit here, I found the rock of his dreams, just off the road, perfect location.
The perfect rock 🙋🏻♀️
My sharp eyes spotted a few other things that disqualified me from the helper role: poison ivy…a massive ant colony (each member scurrying around with something white in it’s mouth 😫)…and a web with millions of orange baby spiders. Maybe even billions. Every single one of them looking directly at me. At this point I needed to embrace my human limitation. I wish I was more at ease with the bug communities, but I just don’t have the mental capacity to buddy up with them.
I finally told Scott, “I don’t think I can help too much with this.” At the same time, I felt justified and relieved from my duties after spotting the rock we would welcome into our yard.
There is no way to describe to you what Scott did to lift this rock into his truck. The kayak sling, ropes, planks, sheets, kitchen stool, kitchen sink (JK)… All I can tell you is that somehow, someway, he got that massive rock into the truck and then got that massive rock into the exact place he wanted it in our newly designed rock garden.
No words.
After the rock was placed, the mulch laid, a medley of flowers from Lowe’s clearance rack placed and planted, and my birthday winter berry shrub sprouting with new growth, everyone on the street noticed the delightful display. This small space went from a wasteland to a Longwood-nook lookalike. An eyesore, until Scott Woods started imagining what it could be.
If there is one way my husband amazes me, it is lifting hefty rocks.
And he has had a wheelbarrow-full to lift. Life has not been easy for him. Just spend an hour with him and you will melt by the warmth of his empathy. Mind you, this 3-dimensional empathy doesn’t develop after reading complicated, thick theology books. It has been cultivated through time in the valley. The engine, resolve, the stick-with-it grit is something to witness. It’s that raw humanness mixed in with divine glory. I have seen many men push beyond the limits of their physical strength, but push into the unknown, intimidating interior work? That’s a rare find.
“Darting through life at a progressively increasing speed diverts us from deeper realities. Likewise, latching onto easy, quick-fix solutions becomes a way of escaping the slow pain of uncertainty and self-confrontation. It helps us avoid the misery of wading through the inner mire toward change.”
Growth displayed like an absolute miracle doesn’t roll out the way we often think. At least, this is what I am noticing in mid-life. It takes raw courage to mature. It means cooperating with God while he brings our true self out of hiding.
As I have observed (and been influenced by) Scott’s practices of reflection and listening. Lasting change, those seismic shifts to our default ways of living, do not come by way of attending a men’s Bible study breakfast at 5:30 am, or tackling a “Bible-in-A-Year” reading plan, or the commitment to never eat without praying first. It’s not come by way of faithfully taking notes in church, or regularly attending men’s retreats. It’s not slipping in Jesus’s name to the heating and air guy to make sure to be a “witness.” By the way, none of these things are hollow, but for most of us, they can be checked off without ever facing the gritty work of transformation. We can do all those things and not connect with Jesus the way He intended. We can do all those things and have zero self-awareness.
It’s “The vacant interstellar places,” as T.S. Eliot calls it, “all the way in a dark wood.”
Scott is a “witness” by way of the profound courage he manifests lifting the hefty rocks of the interior work. And this metamorphosis makes people wonder. Believe me, they notice.
And lest we forget, this thoughtful work is possible only by doing more, receiving more. It happens by being in the presence of one who transforms. Slowly, over time, sitting still long enough to listen, resisting the urge to get up and go. Paying attention, making space for God to do what we can’t. Like stones rumbling around in the ocean for years, their jagged edges made smooth.
There is no transformative growth without silence, stillness, and waiting. And our culture in America today is at war with these practices. Sue Monk Kidd, in her book When the Heart Waits quotes a counselor, “Helen Luke cautions that without significant times to be still, we ‘extinguish the possibility of growth and walk backwards’” (34). Maturity doesn’t just happen. In fact, most of us, as we get older, become so averse to being still that we become robotic and out of touch with ourselves. We don’t know why we feel anxious, irritated, restless, controlling, or insecure. Sue Monk Kidd goes on to say, “I was learning that being still and waiting in one place—going not forward but inward—was the sort of progress that really counts…”
Being a CEO is hard, but sitting still, being alone, letting go of productivity so as to get in touch with what truly matters. This is the hardest work, everything in our lives demands that we can’t take that time, or hijacks us from that space —we can conclude how challenging it is because so few practice it. It’s a hefty rock.
Over the years, our seemingly neutral habits, and our rigid self-protection coil around us like a vice grip, working their own transformation in the opposite direction of peace and freedom. We escape and ignore. Our idols of comfort and reputation, our need to be right, our fear of vulnerability, our self-sufficiency, our love of money, our grasping for approval, our perfectionism, our obsessive control, our drive for productivity at all costs…my friends, these entangle us. They choke us.
These are the hefty rocks. It’s so easy to avoid the grit it takes to go head-to-head with distraction , or face-to-face with the over-scheduled, checked-out life that keeps us numb to the inner chaos. Strength is learning to wait on the Lord who, most days, we don’t believe will communicate.
The way forward is not managing a list of duties. It’s not a sound, moral checklist. It’s not brick-by-brick building a spiritual tower until spent by exhaustion and disillusionment based on a faith built by DOING. We may appear polished up, but we have very little attachment to God.
The Wonder of Courage
Lifting rocks and spending limitless energy on beautifying our small urban space is impressive. But Scott is a word picture for me of fortitude, humility, and courage. Courage is listening. Courage is waiting. Courage is releasing control. Courage is handling conflict with grace. Courage is moving toward the person you are having a hard time with. Ultimately, courage is moving…moving forward looking for the goodness of God to come into the middle of the hard thing. Courage is seeking help. Courage is not escaping, but rather sitting in the unknowns. Courage is admitting when we are wrong.
This courage gives the Spirit a window to work, a wheel to shape us.
Wouldn’t you agree? It is far easier to make a checklist for spiritual living than to sit like a heron waiting on a fish, still and attentive, and believe that we are receiving the mercy of God. Settling down enough to hear him say what he wants to say.
I watched Scott that day off Beagle Road…plan, think, execute…sweat, and lift, then roll with all his might. The fruit of that endurance is evident in my garden.
Wish you could have seen it before. A spot for kids to toss their trash. Not anymore!
I’ve always said to my students (and subsequently, to myself), “Avoiding leads to more avoiding, but strength leads to more strength.” Now I have a real-life example.
I love how T.S. Eliot describes the transformation God does in the dark, in the places where we feel most vulnerable and lost, the places we avoid…Next time I sit still, I will listen for the movement, for “the rumble of wings.”
From Four Quartets, “East Coker” (III.110-116).
“I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
ross
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness
on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama And the bold imposing façade are all being rolled away—”