Who are your 'workers in the field'?
There are people placed ahead of you and me and our children for love and support. And we get to be that for others. Do you see it?
A few months ago in a small community group of women I see every week, I was expressing worry over my daughters. There are times with young adult children where things are going really well, and everyone seems to be happily on their life’s journey and the work of adulting.
This was not one of those times.
They seemed to be on their own struggle bus and I had only been marginally invited in to support them, a normal part of them finding their way, but hard for me at times. Mostly, I just had to watch them shape their own lives with choices that felt unnecessarily difficult to my eyes.
I was distressed and sad and at a loss.
Watching my children ‘flounder’ feels…unecessary. It’s like, why must they learn by making their own choices without utlizing the wisdom I have for them and am hapy to give! (When I am in my coaching brain, I realize this is a very normal part of life and it’s not floundering, it’s just growing up, but my mom-brain sometimes hijacks my thoughts and I tend to live in some fear there.)
I have found it so baffling as a parent that it’s possible to try so hard to ‘do everything right’ and it turns out there’s no such thing and no guarantees on the other side of my thoughtful and intentional attempts along their childhood journey. There is just the regular suffering of life (and joys, I suppose, but today isn’t a day I see that easily).
As I was lamenting, one of the women in the group shared her own story with me—the story of herself as a daughter who, with a good home and loving parenting, made a series of choices that dramatically impacted her life trajectory, to the shock and sadness of her parents.
As a mother now with young adult children, she looked back on that time through the lens of being a parent and told me that her own mother prayed for the other workers in the field to step into her life when she was beyond the emotional and spiritual reach of her parents.
The workers in the field…remember them?
Matthew 9:38 - “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
This is the story of Jesus’ compassion on mankind when he saw the suffering of humanity (Matt 9:36), desiring there to be more of us to help each other. To care for those who are ‘harassed and helpless’.
As my friend continued her story, she described how she was met with ‘the workers in the field’ - the men and women in the world who came alongside her at this particular time on her journey to love her, connect her to a job and housing, sit and have coffee with her, and hold her hand and guide her through some rough times.
There are people who are out in the world, seeded there before you or I or our kids would ever need them—the workers in the field who are the actual hands and feet and spare rooms of Christ.
When I get discouraged around my own adult children and the world they are in, I pause to remember that there are people out in the world who will be there for them. To guide, support and care for them in ways that I cannot. That they have not been made abandoned by their own choices. They, and all of us, do not only get help and love and support when we are ‘doing everything right’ in our lives.
And that we are ALL workers in each other’s fields. We who comfort the child or teen or young adult out in the wild. Who slide an extra tip to the server who is clearly having a rough time. Who assures the struggling young parent that they are doing a good job as they wrestle with a tantrum-ing child in the store. Who give advice and perspective a one who is lost and confused but hungry for some hope. We who open our hearts, our hands, our thoughts, our wallets, and even our homes to someone else’s son or daughter.
There are workers in the field, prepared ahead of time, for you and for me and for our children.
And I see them appearing in my daughter’s lives. If I remember this, it also calls me forward to intentionally look for opportunities to be the worker in the field for others.
There is no magic—it’s us doing the work of love and support for humanity through and on the behalf of a God who sees us and knows us and has given us to each other to serve each other.
(And thank you to the worker in the field who met me as I wandered in distress and supported me with love and care in this conversation.)