Did you know there’s a national competition for people who shell purple hull peas? I didn’t until our pastor shared a picture of the championship contestants as part of a Sunday morning sermon. At his mention of purple hull peas, my daughters looked at me with their eyes and mouths open in surprise, the way kids do when the preacher is talking about something they know. They have shelled purple hull peas.
I would venture that almost anyone who’s grown up in the south has shelled peas and snapped beans with their mother or grandmother. My mom spent hours during the summer months, snapping and rinsing, scooping and canning: purple hull and black-eyed peas, pole and green and lima beans. Squash and okra she washed, cut, and stored in the freezer. It was enough work that she planned her summer vacation around it.
The volume of my mom’s work may seem contrary to the idea our pastor presented around purple hull peas as an example of slow living. Peas were almost always shelled on the front porch, and front porch sitting was about as slow as you could get when I was a girl. There was no email to answer or texts to check. If the phone rang it was for relaxed conversation. Often, passersby would see us rocking in chairs on the porch and park their car on the side of the road to talk.
Times have changed, haven’t they?
Instead of the front porch, my family gathered around the kitchen table one afternoon so Jeff and I could teach our girls how to shell purple hull peas. We didn’t buy a bushel as my parents did, just a small basket from our local farmer’s market. The girls talked and giggled as they shelled and inspected each pea; they were particularly fascinated with the tiny ones.
“No pea is too small to be in the world,” AK said as she saw Lily remove a pea she had placed in the communal “keep” bowl.
“No! It was brown,” Lily explained as she moved the bruised pea to the stack of hulls to compost.
Sorting the good peas from the inedible is the practical lesson in shelling peas but we can learn other things through this labor: the value of working with our hands, stewardship when we have an abundance and, as Abby Kate recognized, that small things matter. We can also take a cue from my pastor and see permission to slow down and seek simple. Shelling peas may not become a regular example for us but we can relax our pace through other activities. In our house, slow and simple looks like laying down with Lily at bedtime to share a chapter in her book. It’s a weekend movie night when Abby Kate pulls a blanket over her legs and lays her head on my shoulder. It’s laughing together at the dinner table as we indulge homemade cheeseburgers.
The same table where the girls shelled peas in the summer is now home base for homework. Abby Kate and Lily hunch over computers and calculators, completing middle school math and science assignments. I watch them work and realize their childhood is fading a little faster than I’d like, sort of like the sunsets do when autumn begins to arrive.
When I feel a shift in seasons, whether on the calendar or in my kids, my faith directs me to Ecclesiastes and the Bible’s guidance that there is a time for everything:
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
I have known the delight of giving birth to my daughters and carried the grief of burying my daddy. I have spent time in friendship and walked away when that time was up. I have generously spread joy and selfishly held it tight. I weep and laugh, search and give up, keep and throw away almost every day it seems.
My daddy wrote in a card to me many years ago “May God keep you in His providential care.” What a gift to know He has and He will! Whatever the circumstance I can say with confidence that God is near to me, and He is near to you, too. From purple hulls to pumpkin spice, through toddlers and teenagers, He is a constant presence along the winding path and the same God through all of our seasons.
