I have the backside of a farmer.

Or so it would seem, as I settle into my tractor-seat chair to write.  Its hollows meet my curves with comfort and cold metal soon warms to my own body’s temperature.

We fit, me and this chair.  I find comfort and purpose and joy in its embrace.

I consider the farmer whose tush preceded mine in this seat.  No doubt his days started too early and lasted too long, beginning and ending in the dark.

Every morning, before dawn, I imagine that this seat met the farmer’s own, each waking up to the chilly start of a new day.  The farmer sighed, the seat creaked in response, and with the turn of a key, they made their way to the fields.

He and this seat would spend countless hours together through hot summer and rainy fall days.  Hard work was all they knew.  Bumpy terrain.  Fertile seasons and drought.

Likely, the only music they experienced every work day was the farmer’s lips whistling to the tunes in his head.

The smell of the great outdoors and freshly cut crops surrounded them.

Fresh and gritty and glorious.

Out in the middle of nowhere, they only had the company of each other.

Dawn to dusk, the farmer and his beloved tractor seat.

In my mind’s eye, I see the farmer at day’s end, leaving his hat on the back of that seat and grunting a weary, “see you in the morning” to the same metal friend who will greet him in a handful of hours.

To do what the two of them were meant to do together.

I want to be like that farmer.

I don’t have a farm.  I don’t get up before dawn to harvest or sow.

I can’t even whistle.

But, I have a farmer’s backside and a tractor seat.

And, like the farmer,

my seat and I have a job to do together.

Instead of whistling, I will play my piano music.

Rather than hay bales and freshly cut crops, I will take in the smell of a lovely burning candle.

Just me and my tractor seat.

As I settle into this symbol of hard work history, I pledge to carry on its tradition.  To honor the memory of a farmer and his dedication, hoping that such a legacy will live on through me.

I will sigh.  My seat will creak.

And we will get to work….

Colossians 3:17 – And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.