same size
My family and I have spent the last 21 years living in the small town of Mount Airy, known to some as Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show. When I moved here as a wide-eyed 23-year-old newlywed, I’ll confess I turned my nose up at many of its small-town ways. I missed strip malls and chain restaurants. I pined for sprawling suburbia in the way a health food convert longs for Hamburger Helper.
Much has changed over two decades and my affection for this place I call home has grown in ways that surprise me still. I find myself fond of the mediocrity of our local haunts, even loyal to them. We have one drab Italian restaurant, but it’s OUR Italian restaurant. Our discount clothing store is like the red-headed stepchild of TJ Maxx, but if you’re willing to go often “you’ll be thrilled with what you’ll find,” I tell people. If a dog can be so ugly that it’s cute, then maybe a town can be so average that it’s wonderful. The fair that comes to town every fall is a microcosm of this exact type of mediocrity. The sign for the racing pigs is hand-written, in pencil no doubt, on a piece of cardboard and the acrobat riding a moped on a not-so-high-highwire will dust your funnel cake with powdered sugar when he’s in between shows.
My husband and I were wandering around said fair one evening, letting our kids slide down the wavy metal slide in musty burlap bags, when we noticed the different types of faces of the people around us. Various tells gave away that some of these folks lived what we imagined to be “small lives.” I scan my heart even as I type that, looking for any hint of judgment or self-righteousness in those words: small lives. And while I’m sure it’s there, I also notice compassion. Small lives are often something inherited, rather than chosen. If it’s noble to have ones reach extend beyond ones grasp, it seems as though our fellow fair-goers reach went only as far as their grasp to whatever life was right in front of them, as small as that may be.
A few more moments passed, and I felt something reminiscent of helplessness wash over me. It was a feeling of unfairness that some of us can reach further, higher, longer for reasons unrelated to our own merits. The feeling was suffocating, not because it was so enormous or passionate, but because it had nowhere to go. It stayed stale in my mouth until the words muscled their way out, “Someday all of our lives will be the same size.” Eric looked at me kindly, glad of my heart I suppose and said with equal parts resignation and hope, “Yes, that’s right.”
This thought, that someday all our lives will be the same size, has followed me around since that day. It shows up when I observe needs, hurts, disgraces, devastations, and darkness that are all bigger than I can account for and certainly bigger than I can do anything about. I try and do my part and keep my heart soft but feel myself needing something more to hold, a sturdier branch to cling to. I get up a couple times each night and look into my backyard. Winter has made the trees bare and gray and cold. I feel a rush of gratitude that I’m warm inside, then I’m immediately at odds with that gratitude. There are people out there. Dogs out there. Cold and afraid and I’m pretty sure my gratitude does nothing for them. And then I hear it: ”Someday all of our lives will be the same size.”
I have the privilege of sitting with people with lives of different sizes. Some of them sit in my office and can hardly keep up with the abundance of it all: the job, the kids, the home, the second home. Yet others sit there and count their pennies, glad for warmer temperatures or a card in the mail. Their dreams of a spouse, a child, a home of their own, a body that works all fade into the acceptance that this probably isn’t “just a season.” This is it. Some of it won’t change. Some of it won’t get better.
The words echo again and I grab the branch and hold on tight. But there’s more. In the parable of the vineyard workers in Mark 20, Jesus’ words hold us up as he explains that in His kingdom “the last will be first and the first last.” There’s much to say and imagine about what this means. He quiets the moaning and groaning of the pharisaical heart that feels like it deserves more. He calls forward the unpracticed heart that’s worried they’re too late to the party for it to matter that they came at all. He hangs a banner over the fairgoer, the widow, the orphan, the client that says “Stick with me. Someday all of your lives will be ____.” Fill in the blank with whatever good word comes to you and know that it can’t come close to capturing what it really will be.
There will be no front of the line or back of the line. Only justice and mercy and a dazzling inheritance. But I also hope that the ones with the small lives, the ones who held on, get the head of the table. Oh, how I would rejoice to make them the belle of the ball. If they were the bride, I want to hold their flowers and fluff their train and make sure they’re drinking enough water when the dance party has gone well into the night. The image is vivid but brief as I temper myself with the reality that we likely have a ways to go. Until then, when the winter trees are bare and the longings unmet, I’ll listen to his voice say, “Someday, Dear One, someday….”
Kristin Leathers began work as a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in 2008 and became a member of Barnabas Triad in 2019. In addition, she has worked for Young Life for 14 years. She earned her MA in Counseling from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and her undergraduate degree from Meredith College. Kristin has been married for 17 years to her husband, Eric, and together they have two children. Kristin enjoys being with her friends, playing games, exercising, and all things related to home design. She is proud of her family, her work, and to be rounding out her third time through all seasons of Downton Abbey.
