Hannah Coulter (Chad's take)

On the way home from my last day of working at the Lab, I stopped by our church to see if I could talk to our pastor. After listening to our newest travail, he said something to the effect of 'if I didn't empathize with you so much, I would think your situation is funny.'

And how are we taking it? As Hannah Coulter recommends, we're fine.

We were reminded of the writings of Wendell Berry by the Ten Wakes writer, and so decided to read a book over the Christmas break. Hannah Coulter is a fictional autobiography of a woman that lived a rather ordinary life in rural Kentucky in the 20th century. Very little action occurs, and the book is full of wisdom expressed in simple terms. I loved it!

The tone of the book is sad. Most of the Hannah's stories describe the loss of friends and family members and the departure of her children's generation from home. And this makes a good deal of sense because these tragedies are the big events that shape her life. Between these tragedies, day to day life consisting of farmwork and household work continues unabated. This is one of the lessons of the book: that doing our work and sharing our lives with family and friends is what we do. It is how we find our joy.

That's not how I envisioned my life going while growing up. I wanted the big things (family, job, health) to go well so I could be happy. The day to day stuff is supposed to be just filler, right? But I'm learning (maybe too often, Lord?) that big things do go wrong. My faith is challenged, but my response needs to be a resolve to plug along. Then I can always answer that we're doing just fine, and how are you?