Leaving the work undone

puzzles and my desire to cross off my list

I took a hard stop between Christmas and the new year from school and work and even home responsibilities.¹ We took the camper and traveled to see family. I didn’t open a computer. I slept 9-10 hours a night. The only reading I did was a few pages of Little Women before I feel asleep. We got home Sunday and designated Monday as a reset day. I took down the rest of the Christmas decorations, had groceries delivered, went for a run. But over the weekend, anxiety had been building about work and school. January is a full month for my work. Some groups are starting and I need to finish a bunch of details and make sure the leaders are supported. Our main discipleship groups are launching and there’s a lot of work to be done with both the logistics and the leaders before that happens. There’s conversations and details and prep and teaching. I’ll talk to a lot of people in our congregation and try to be sure everyone finds a spot. 

The winter quarter of seminary also started this past week. Monday night, I put all of my assignments in my project management app and felt the work piling up. Normally I start work for a new week of class by Sunday at least and this week it wasn’t until Tuesday. I scrambled and stayed up too late all week, but got it all done. 

Nevertheless, after finishing up a few last things Friday morning, I realized that I still felt incredibly anxious. I was starting my sabbath and I prayed and tried to unwind.² I got up from the couch where I was trying to take a brief nap when I realized I was just ruminating. I played the piano.³ I went on a run with a friend. I played some Taylor Swift on my way to middle school pickup.⁴ My work is going to constantly be in process, not neatly done, and I have to learn to live well with that. 

Wednesday night, when I started listening to lectures, I also started a puzzle. I had ordered a beautiful Disney/Pixar puzzle of an artist’s desk and I was thrilled when it arrived late after dinner because I wanted something to do with my hands while I listened to lectures.⁵ I pressed play on the YouTube video for class and started picking out the edge pieces. I listened to all but one lecture, stopping my puzzling sporadically to jot down notes in a Word doc. 

I really wanted to finish the frame of the puzzle before I quit.⁶ Even after I decided it would be better to not start the last lecture and instead go to bed, I kept sifting through the box of almost one thousand pieces hoping to find the few last pieces of the edge. Then I realized I was looking at my life. I’ve always wanted the work to be done. I want to check off the task. I want it to be finished, marked off, in the past. Instead I’m constantly reminded that the work will never be done.⁷ Nevertheless, I have to stop. To sleep. To sabbath. To steward a person in front of me. One day, to die. 

I haven’t read The Hiding Place in years, but while I’ve been rolling this idea in my brain and drafting this post, I kept thinking of a scene from the book so I looked it up. Early in the story, Tante Jans is diagnosed with diabetes which was a death sentence then. She immediately threw herself head-long into work to make the most of the time she had left. After running a test, Corrie discovers that Tante Jan’s death is only weeks away. When they go to tell her, they try to console her with the memories of all of her work. Her response is humbling.

But our well-meant words were useless. In front of us the proud face crumpled; Tante Jans put her hands over her eyes and began to cry. “Empty, empty!” she choked at last through her tears. “How can we bring anything to God? What does He care for our little tricks and trinkets?”

And then as we listened in disbelief she lowered her hands and with tears still coursing down her face whispered, “Dear Jesus, I thank You that we must come with empty hands. I thank You that You have done all—all—on the Cross, and that all we need in life or death is to be sure of this.”

She then proceeds to ask them to leave so that she can clean her desk so no one else has to.⁸ She didn’t finish her work either.

God finished His work at creation. He rested. Jesus finished His work on the cross. He died in order to be resurrected; to ensure victory over death, He went through it. My work though? It’s not completed. It never will be. I’ll leave it in disarray, both from procrastination and distraction as well as because of my human limitations. 

Paul said that he had fought the good fight. He had finished his course. He had kept the faith. He didn’t say the work was done. He spent his last few letters passing on the work, reminding those coming after him what needed to be done and how they should do it. 

It’s not just the puzzle that I had to quit before I finished a definitive part. My life with my family and the work it requires is never done. My work at church is people oriented; you can’t mark people off a list. There’s a countdown on my phone to graduation, but I won’t finish learning. There will always be much I don’t know. The work is never finished. Nevertheless, I have to lay it down regularly in order to have the capacity to pick it up again. I have to practice living with the work without my anxiety of needing the work to be finished. 

When you like drawing a decisive line through a task as I do to mark its completion, this truth is hard. But life is not a bunch of tasks to be marked through or checked off. Life is to be lived, not finished, and so much of the work remains perpetually in progress. I know this will be ongoing learning for me this year. I’m going to need to have forward vision and yet only worry about today’s work. I’m going to pray over the work⁹ and feel a little more confident in my ability to do the work.¹⁰ I’m going to leave things undone because it is impossible to finish everything. 

That is ok. Not only ok, but exactly what life is.¹¹ 

1. Credit our church office with intentionally closing to give both staff and our volunteers a break.

2. This is my not a prescription for anxiety. This is just from my awareness of what was happening in my own life. I do deal with a decent amount of anxiety and naming what is causing it is often step zero for me.

3. I am not a good musician but I love to play and it’s something I want to do for fun this year. Music is good for you.

4. 1989 if you are interested.

5. I’m not great at auditory learning in general, but doing something while I listen helps.

6. I still haven’t found one edge piece. But we also have one edge piece that clearly doesn’t belong to our puzzle so I’m worried that we don’t even have it.

7. This is another truth that I started learning as a stay-at-home mom. Finishing navigating life with four children under the age of seven is not about finishing things.

8. Chapter 3 of The Hiding Place.

9. The idea that I can do it on my own is silly.

10. Because I doubt myself a lot but time has proven I am more capable than I imagine.

11. Unless perhaps I had been a tax preparer. Then I might just be able to cross each person’s work off bit by bit. That analysis may just reveal my ignorance of what a tax preparer does.