Stronger

I think the strongest I’ve ever been in my life was one summer during high school. It wasn’t because of the boot camp that they called “two-a-days” football camp, most of which I sat out “on the bench,” even in two-a-days. It wasn’t because I mowed my dad’s lawn to perfection, which he taught me to do before the days of weed-eaters, clipping the edge of the grass up by the fence on my hands and knees with hand-clippers. It wasn’t because I loved to run, which I didn’t.

I was so strong because I worked for a farmer every day, from spring break until two-a-days started in late summer, moving irrigation pipe. The pipe was laid out on the ground in thirty-foot joints for a quarter of mile. It took twelve quarter-mile lines of irrigation pipe to water all of his cotton. Every morning, just after the night’s twelve-hour watering, the farmer’s son and I would move the pipe by hand. We had to move it sixty feet forward in the freshly plowed and newly muddied field, one thirty-foot joint at a time per man, all three miles of it. It took from sunup until sundown, every day, six days a week. We did get Sundays off because he was a Christian.

My only real motivation for slogging through calf-deep mud carrying 100-pound joints of pipe in a mind-numbing routine was the whopping $1.15 per hour the farmer paid, a good check every week and no time to spend it. That, and the sunrises and sunsets. I love West Texas sunrises and sunsets. When all else fails, they inspire faith in eternal Providence every single time.

All I could do when I got home at night was eat whatever mom left out for my late supper, take a shower and go to bed. I was worn out every night, my muscles aching to the core, every sinew stretched, my chest strong, my thighs pumped up and my belly flat. I don’t know if I’ve ever been stronger.

Someday, a long time from now, I wonder if I’ll look back on this moment in my life and say of my soul, “I was never stronger.” It’s really hard to pray right now. It’s really hard to have faith in a lot of things I told people when all the bills were paid as far as I could see. It’s hard to forgive – and I really like to. It’s really hard to write, and I love to write. I saw a sunset the other night. I watched until the last micro-second when the sun slipped beneath the horizon on the other side of the world I could see. My soul took a deep breath.

I wonder if someday I’ll look back on this moment, when everything souls are supposed to do is harder than ever, and say of myself, “I was never stronger.” I wonder.