Once in a great while, everything seems to go right …really, really right. That happened recently while I was speaking at a conference. In the first session, I was given an over-the-top introduction that strained credulity (even mine). But I admit it was nice to hear. Then, during my presentations, I felt a close connection with the audience. The responsiveness was energizing to me. To borrow from an old Broadway tune, I could have spoken all night. Then, at the end, there was an embarrassing amount of applause. I tried to remind myself that it’s Jesus who is supposed to get the honor, but I deducted 10 percent of it for myself. Sort of a tithe in reverse.
Ever been there?
Afterward at the hotel where I would spend the night before returning home the next morning, I called my wife, Gail. I told her everything (everything!), including the stuff about the audience, the introduction, and the applause. I should have left it alone, but I had to share it with someone. Gail listened and told me she was glad for me. Then she abruptly changed the subject and inquired about my travel plans the next day. I gave her my flight numbers and arrival time.
Her response? “Good. You’ll be home in time to rake the leaves after lunch.”
Rake the leaves? Hadn’t she heard all I told her about the conference? The bloated ego in me wanted to protest, “Why should a conference-speaker like me be expected to rake leaves?” I wanted to wallow in the afterglow of my experience. But I didn’t protest.
We ended the conversation with her words, “Come home to your loved ones.”
Gail knows me well. She senses those times when I need to be pulled back from the seductions and distortions of public life to the company of loved ones, where the ego is quickly restored to true size. Raking leaves is one of the therapies.
Hear that term? Loved ones. I heard it more frequently when I was a boy. It referred to one’s intimate community—the people at home: your spouse (if married); your children (if a parent); your extended family; a few very close friends. If the group were any larger, the term loved ones would be diluted and meaningless.
I hope loved ones has not become an obsolete term, a casualty of our enlarged capacity for superficial human “contacts” made possible by technology and fast transportation.
Cultivating “Loved Ones”
Loved ones are (or should be) at the foundation of a leader’s life. Loved ones should come first in a leader’s affections and priorities. Loved ones should never have to compete with all the other ones that make up the public world of a leader. Loved ones are those “who have to take you in” (Robert Frost) whether successful or unsuccessful, energized or exhausted, exhilarated or dispirited.
The little things (leaf raking) are part of life among loved ones. There character is revealed.
When I meet someone for the first time and there is opportunity for conversation, I often ask, “Tell me what your loved ones are like.” The answer often indicates something about the relational balances in a person’s life. You find out who he or she includes in the loved ones category. Sometimes you find yourself wanting to ask of a busy, highly-driven person: do you even have any loved ones?
The place of loved ones on the priority list was defined for me early in my pastoral life. Walking one day with a wise old man, at least fifty years my senior, I asked what now seems to be a stupid question: “What should be my priority? My family (meaning loved ones) or the Lord’s work?” It seemed an appropriate question then. I’d grown up in a Christian tradition that made it clear that the “Lord’s work” always came first. Sacrifices had to be made, and loved ones got the leftovers in a leader’s schedule, the last dregs of his or her energy.
I have carried a mental picture of my father, a one-time pastor, all my life. It is of his back when, each morning, he walked away from our home to his church office. In my imaginative picture, I never see his face. Only his back. But I understand why. It was because he was told by his mentors that “you must give yourself to God’s work, and God will take care of your family.” I know he loved me, but it’s still his back, not his face, that I see in my mind.
So I asked the old pastor, “What should be my priority: the family or the Lord’s work?”
His answer? “Gordon, your family is the Lord’s work.” That simple sentence, spoken in a very teachable moment, changed a large part of how I structured relationships in my life.
When among loved ones—assuming a healthy relational environment—you see certain important transactions: exchanges of affection, care, laughter, encouragement. You see openness that provides opportunity to process dreams and aspirations, fears and doubts. Growth and maturation happen among loved ones as ideas and skills are shared and learned. With loved ones, you feel more truly human (as God meant us to be) than you do out in the larger world.
Among loved ones, there is a certain “basicness” to life. Loved ones, for example, expect you to rake leaves or perform other daily necessities. Inside such earthy expectations, you and I—if we are public leaders—are restrained from falling into the trap of thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think (a familiar line from Romans 12).
An infrequently mentioned Bible character, Uzziah, had a meteoric beginning to his royal career. Set on the throne in Jerusalem at the age of 16, Uzziah was an instant success. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” He sought God. “As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success.”
He was well on his way to becoming the greatest king in Jerusalem since David. Then after several decades, this: “After Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord.”
Life flourishes among loved ones who know who you should be. Routines help you become that.
Somewhere along the line, someone should have told Uzziah to go home and rake some leaves. It might have prevented a bad ending to his life.
A companion story might be the one told about a young, university-degreed man who went to participate in a retreat led by Gandhi. When he learned that he was expected to assist in the daily cleaning of the latrines, he vigorously protested: “Don’t you know that I have a doctorate from the London School of Economics. I am meant to do great things.”
Gandhi is said to have replied: “I know you can do great things. What I do not know is whether you can do little things.”
Varieties of Leaf Raking
Doing the little things (leaf-raking) is part of life among the loved ones. There our most basic sins are revealed. With loved ones masks come off, character is revealed, and the true quality of our Christian faith is tested. No wonder some leaders minimize time with loved ones.
Henri Nouwen wrote: “Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.”
When Gail told me to hurry home so that I could rake the leaves, she was steering me away from that trap.
Raking leaves is only one of many essential activities among loved ones. None of them are novel or new. But when neglected, they take a pretty serious toll on the vitality of life. Here are some other forms of “leaf-raking.”
Thankfulness
I liken the habit of thankfulness to raking leaves. We’ve been taught to be thankful ever since we were old enough to talk. Who has not heard the voice of mother saying, “Now say thank you to the nice lady.” And we learned to say the words. Even if our hearts were not in the effort.
A grandson of ours at age 3 refuses his mother’s admonition to say thank you to me after I have purchased him an ice cream cone. He simply will not say it no matter how hard she tries. When she gives up and steps away, he looks at me and says quietly, “I’m thankful; I just don’t want to say it.”
A person naturally given to a genuine thankfulness is rare. We must learn to become people who fit Paul’s description “overflowing with thanksgiving.” Such people walk through the day looking for things to be thankful for. They thank strangers; they thank associates. But their greatest, most intense thankfulness, is toward their loved ones.
Thankfulness is a recognition that I am in community with a special few. When I express thanks—in whatever way I say it—I am saying, “I needed what you have given. I could not be where I am without you.” In short, thankfulness is the act of humbling oneself and exalting the place and efforts of another. That’s rather biblical.
Unfortunately, it is easy to fall into the habit of assuming the support and contribution of loved ones, and to direct our efforts of thankfulness toward those, relatively speaking, who count the least.
Listening
This seems so obvious at first. Then one day as a leader you find yourself too busy to listen to the most important people in your life. All day long you listen to associates, to big givers, to the persistent critics, the loudest voices. And slowly the temptation grows to listen less to those who love you most: the child, a spouse, a best friend. They’re always there, you reason; you can find time to listen to them later.
But later you’re tired or preoccupied. And one day you discover that those to whom you should have listened most have found others to listen to them. Or they have simply stopped talking.
A friend who in his earlier life gave himself obsessively to his youth ministry sat on the edge of his small daughter’s bed as she was going to sleep. Knowing that he was going to return to the church as soon as she was asleep, she launched a zinger of a question at him: “Daddy, do you love the young people at church more than you love me?” The question launched a total reappraisal of life.
A most memorable piece of advice came to Gail and me from the late Walter Trobisch, who warned us that ministry would inevitably crowd out any fresh time for us to talk and listen to each other unless we were careful.
“Schedule a mandatory time-out for husband/wife conversation when you first get home,” he said to us. “Plan your schedules so that you’re ready to suspend all other activity in order to talk about the experiences of the day in those first moments of homecoming. Listen to one another!” We did what he said and made it work about 75 percent of the time.
Cooperation
Cooperatoin means sharing the work of running a home. This is usually (but not always) more of a challenge for men than for women. Most men are far more tolerant of disorder and undone tasks around the house. They can live with more chaos. I know; I used to be like that.
An unmade bed would not have bothered me as a young husband. Dishes left in the sink would have had no effect. Dirty clothes left lying around? No problem. Trash not disposed of? It’s okay; wait till tomorrow. Leaves unraked? A wind will probably blow them over to the neighbor’s lawn.
One day I had a Damascus-road-like experience. I had a vision of how much of a burden I was to live with, how much I expected Gail to shoulder the responsibilities for making our home an orderly, hospitable place of peace. I was little more than one of the “kids” she had to pick up after.
When I discovered cooperation, our marriage upticked. I stopped “using” my wife and became more of an adult, sharing the responsibility of keeping our home in a way that it should be. I determined that “house-keeping” would be a part of my life also. It not only made a practical difference in the economy of our lives, but it drew us together in ways that simply would not have happened otherwise.
Repenting
By this I mean one’s readiness to acknowledge responsibility when there has been a failure in a relationship. Something has been forgotten or poorly done. Someone has spoken sharply; someone has been insensitive; someone has been selfish.
Repenting begins with a readiness to say, “Í’m sorry. I was wrong. I need your forgiveness.”
Such common words, those expressions of repentance. But they keep a relationship well-oiled in grace. Without them issues aren’t cleansed. By mid-life you have a marriage or a family made up of people hardened toward one another. Respect has dissipated; resentment fills each soul.
Some have likened repenting to keeping short accounts. The old principle, oft stated, was to never allow the sun to go down upon unresolved wrath. How many times I can remember lying next to my wife in our bed, the room darkened, the hour late. Some issue has divided us, and there we are, not speaking, not allowing any part of our bodies to touch. Someone—often me—needs to say “I’m sorry,” but the words come hard. Pride, needing to be right, is on the line. Then, finally, the words are spoken and two people reach out and touch one another. Love is exchanged. But not before repentance.
Cheerleading
Cheering means making sure that those most intimate to us are being encouraged to their highest potential.
Gail taught me how it worked. She started cheering me the first time we met. She got behind my preaching, my life as a graduate student, my hopes to be a writer. Whenever she saw that I had a dream about something, her immediate effort was to support it.
I was not that quick. But once I caught on, I watched her grow and cheered. Her life as a reader, a speaker, a counselor to women took off, and I could see the life of God in her efforts. I never realized how satisfying it would be to watch my wife in action and know that I had played a role in helping her get where God wanted her to be.
Similarly, I came to see how important was my cheery voice in the lives of our children. Standing on the sidelines of their games, sitting on the edge of their beds, rubbing their backs as they drifted off into sleep, staying at the dinner table long after the eating to talk about the world of teenagers: these things all took on the form of cheer.
Cheering others on is important for both loved ones and those beyond that circle.
Playing
I cannot resist putting playing in the leaf-raking category. In younger years, playing happened because we had children who pulled us into their world. We loved being with them. And then they left home for school and marriage. Where was our play now? At first, Gail and I simply did more work until we realized that we had forfeited something important to our relationship.
We had to relearn laughing, relaxing, doing the fun things. It wasn’t all that easy, because the claims of those beyond the circle of our loved ones always had one more thing for us to do. Meaningful things. But things that could suck the fun out of our walk together.
We are now a couple who with our extended family and our close friends know a lot about playing. It has made a great difference.
A Shared Spiritual Life
Learning how to pray together (even over the phone when we are separated). Sharing the fruit of discoveries when reading the Bible or the spiritual masters. Describing our doubts and fears or our hopes and challenges. These are all part of a shared spiritual journey. Like leaf-raking, they don’t happen automatically. But these little routines help souls meld together into an uncommon union.
So when Gail says to come home and rake the leaves, there’s more at stake than just disposing of what the trees have dropped on our lawn. She wants me to come home. Life starts and flourishes among the loved ones who know who you really are, who you should be, and the routines help you to become that.
The other day the phone rang. It was one of our grandchildren. Naturally I was glad to hear the voice, but it was interrupting the writing of this article. I was tempted to keep the conversation short. Couldn’t this child wait for another time? My concentration was interrupted. This grandchild wanted to know if I’d drop everything and drive him to the store for a video game.
Turn off my computer and turn my attention to a video game? I was reminded of raking leaves.
Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and interim president of Denver Seminary.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
