I didn’t want Ashley to get out of bed this morning.

I wanted to pull her back down beside me, bury my face in her shoulder, stay warm under the covers and sleep just a little longer. We love to lay there in the bed in silence together before the sun comes up, not quite still asleep but not yet awake either. She is the best snuggler, and for a few minutes after we woke up, I was perfectly content to stay right there.

But she had somewhere she wanted to be.

She wanted to get to the gym early, see her friends before their scheduled workout on her pilates-torture-machine, and have a little bit of the morning for herself.

And there were things that had to happen before any of us could really get on with our day.

Handley had to make the bus. Emerson had to get out the door on time and head to school in his golf cart. Breakfast had to happen. People had to wake up. The machinery of another school morning was already beginning to turn.

So Ashley got up. She is much more dutiful than I am. I lay there for another five minutes and listened as she did all the things downstairs to get the day kicked off right for the kids.

She almost always puts the rest of us ahead of herself, and I have watched her do it over and over again through this season of our lives. There is a steadiness to the way she carries our family that I admire deeply – and, if I am being truthful, sometimes wonder whether I possess in the same measure.

I think, right now, our family is her purpose.

Her yoke. Her burden. And I don’t mean burden in the negative sense of the word. I mean the thing she has willingly put her shoulders under. The thing she carries because she loves us.

Which got me wondering this morning: What is mine? Do I even know some days? Mine seems to be spread across so many things. My family. My work. The people I work with. The projects entrusted to me. Scouts: the boy Troop, the girl Troop, the Fayette District Key 3. Friends. Extended family. Church. Neighbors. Community. Houses and cars and bills and chores and travel and whatever else happens to land on the list.

So many things to juggle. So many competing demands. And there is absolutely no way to satisfy all of them.

There is always another place I could help. Another problem I could solve. I’m a problem solver by nature – something I have finally learned after 21 years of marriage is that I am not here to solve all of Ashley’s problems. Most of the time, I just need to be there to listen. There is always  another person whose burden I could make just a little lighter if I were willing to give them another hour, another evening, another little piece of myself.

I know how to do that. Sometimes I feel like I may know how to do it too well.

Going through some of Momma’s things this past week, I came across an old polaroid photograph of Daddy plowing his garden.

He was walking behind a mule, shirtless in his blue jeans, turning over that red east Alabama clay he loved so passionately. I can’t tell when or where it was taken. It’s blurry and it was a long time ago, in an entirely different world from the one that we all inhabit today.

It is one of those photographs that somehow contains an entire person.

Daddy loved that dirt like Scarlett in Gone with the Wind. He told me countless stories about the land, our family, the people who worked it before him and the life he had lived on and around it.

The mule had a name. I cannot remember it. That has bothered me ever since I saw the picture. I keep thinking I ought to know it. Daddy told me. Probably more than once. But there always seems to be one detail that escapes me now, and the two people I would naturally call to ask are no longer here to answer the phone.

Maybe I’ll remember it…maybe I won’t, and I’ll eventually just make up a name and dare anybody to prove me wrong…not that I would ever do that…

But I keep coming back to the picture. Daddy. The mule. The plow. The dirt. And the yoke.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” I have heard those words my entire life, but this morning I found myself thinking about what a yoke actually does.

It connects you to the work. It lets you pull. And I am pretty good at pulling. The harder question may be whether every plow I am strong enough to pull is one I ought to hitch myself to.

There is a football game tonight. Alexander is marching again this year, playing mellophone, and for the third year I will be part of the pit crew helping move all of the band’s equipment onto the field for halftime and then hauling it all back to the band room afterward.

It is a lot, and usually consumes pretty much the entire third quarter. I learned earlier this afternoon that the kids were going to move their equipment down before the game, which was a nice surprise. That plan has already changed, of course, so we will be pushing it down ourselves – assuming this late-summer monsoon passes over quickly enough for there to actually be a game to push all that equipment toward.

And apparently they are short volunteers in the concession stand tonight – the band boosters man the concession stand as somewhat of a perpetual fundraiser for the band. Dutiful Thomas immediately thought: I can help with that. Of course I can. I know they need somebody. I know another set of hands would make someone else’s night easier. I know I am physically capable of doing it.

And I immediately felt guilty for not volunteering. But I am tired. It has been a week. And somewhere in all of this I am beginning to understand that just because I can carry another burden does not mean that I should.

I am already going to the game. I am already helping the band. I am already spending part of that night behind the scenes because my oldest son will be out there on the field with a mellophone in his hands doing his best to not get called out for playing too loudly (wonder where he gets that from…). There will always be another concession stand – and – haha – Ashley and I have now signed up to help with concessions next week…

But there will not always be another Friday night when Alexander is marching.

Maybe purpose is not about figuring out every burden I am capable of carrying. Maybe it is about understanding which ones are actually mine.

Maybe fulfillment is not found in hitching myself to every plow within reach, but in putting my shoulders into the right one – helping make my family’s burden lighter, helping make my partner’s burden lighter, even if only a little.

That old mule Daddy was working in that picture didn’t plow every field on the old Dark place back home. Daddy pointed him down one row at a time. And maybe that is enough: one row at a time.

This morning, my row was pretty simple. Ashley was headed to the gym. Handley needed to make the bus. Alexander had to leave early to go to meetings and makeup tests that he was already double booked for. Emerson needed to get moving toward school.

And downstairs, sausage patties were sizzling and grease was popping on the cooktop while the vent fan struggled mightily – and unsuccessfully – to keep the entire house from smelling like breakfast.

I just needed to get out of bed and get moving, because the day was already moving along whether I was up or not.

I suppose the trick is figuring out which plow I am supposed to be pulling while it does.