Fruit of Our Labor

 

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”  ~ Nick Hornby, English novelist, essayist and screenwriter (b 1957)

The cold arctic wind whipped across the cornfield creating whirling snow devils as it went. The temperature was plummeting and with winds gusting to 50 mph the wind chill factor would easily fall into the minus 60-degrees range. 

Outside our apartment building I could see traffic creeping up and down Annie Glidden Road, people just trying to get home so they could hunker down for the night.

The local markets would be busy with customers buying beer, chips and dip for their private “storm parties.” Based on what I saw out my window, they would need to get home soon before the roads became impassable.

When I accepted a teaching assistantship at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, I had no idea the weather could be this inhumane. It could be downright scary.

Nor had I intended to bring a new bride here to live. But that’s exactly what I had done. We had met in southwestern Pennsylvania, both from small towns. After a relatively short courtship, I had proposed over summer break and then returned to DeKalb for my second year of graduate school, leaving my betrothed behind to plan the wedding.

We were married just before Christmas in her family church and I brought her with me when I returned for second semester. Teresa promptly found a job as a social worker in a local sheltered living facility and workshop.

This evening she had gotten home before the storm broke, but in a previous storm, a few weeks earlier, I had nearly lost her. She had had to be rescued from a snow drift by two men on cross-country skis.

I turned from the window to look at her. Teresa was curled up on our fake leather JC Penney discount couch, sound asleep. She lay in front of our 13-inch black and white portable which illuminated her face with flickers of light. “Would she have agreed to marry me if she had known this would be her fate?” I wondered.

Returning to my vigil at the window, I pondered our first three months of marriage. Nobody had really expected our marriage to last, but so far so good – or not so good considering the weather. Was everyone right? Would our marriage fail, or would we beat the odds and prove our critics wrong?

Today, 35 years later I’ve stopped worrying. Except now we live in sunny southern California.

In today’s world everything is about convenience and efficiency. We want things easy, fast and simple, even when it comes to relationships. Speed and Internet dating, drive-through wedding chapels, and open and/or disposable marriages are fast becoming the rule rather than the exception.

Someone we meet once is referred to thereafter as a friend, and social media gives us the ability to “friend” anyone we want. Immediately!

But relationships are not as simple as picking up fresh fruit at the local grocery store. Relationships are more like growing the fruit tree in the first place. Trees produce fruit because we nurture them, giving them our time and attention.

Furthermore, it is not simply the fruit we produce, but the joy we experience in the growth and nurturing process.

In our tiny little one bedroom apartment in DeKalb, Illinois, Teresa and I were 900 miles from the nearest family member. As a result, we had only one another to rely on, and by a lot of trial and error, we grew together, learning to love one another and to trust one another.

Real, mature, relationships are grown, not manufactured. The fruit of those relationships are borne of time and effort; they are not simply and efficiently acquired.

As stewards of God’s time, growing relationships is time well spent.

Dear God: Teach me to grow and nurture my relationships with others.

“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still …connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.” ~ C. Joybell C. , American author, poet, and essayist

©2012 James E. Carper. All rights reserved.

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