A Word About Buttons

Last week, as I sat alone in a coffee shop thinking, I watched a little boy across the room, who was out with his dad, I supposed Christmas shopping for mom, or maybe a sister. As they were leaving, the dad said to the little guy, “Button your jacket now, and let’s go.” The dad was paying the tab for their outing, and was oblivious to his young son, probably 4 or maybe 5, who now struggled mightily to button his jacket. “Small, young fingers learning artful manipulation,” I thought to myself. After a minute or so of struggle, the dad saw the dilemma and buttoned the jacket for the little guy, so they could leave. I watched that child skip out the door.

I don’t ever remember learning how to button a jacket or a shirt. I just know I learned at some point in my life. Everybody my age knows how to button their shirt, except … well, except that this morning as I got dressed I noticed something. My fingers don’t seem to work as well as they used to. The shirt I was putting on had small buttons on the collar that needed to be fastened. And as I sat on that little couch we have at the end our bed, for the life of me I didn’t think I’d ever get those buttons fastened. I finally asked my wife if she could help me. It wasn’t that I didn’t know which button went into which hole. I knew what needed to happen. I was just struggling to make my fingers cooperate. I felt like a five-year-old. 

Then, it dawned on me. In so many ways, I guess I am like a five-year-old, struggling with tiny things I know how to do, but fail to successfully pull off. And I don’t skip along after somebody helps me.

I don’t think the problem was the buttons for either one of us. It was muscle memory. You might say the spirit was strong, but the flesh was weak. Same buttoning problem for both of us. Same intended result. Same human dilemma: We both needed help with small things.

The prophet Zechariah once spoke to people who were discouraged by how small their work seemed. “Do not despise the day of small things,” he said. I used to hear that as encouragement for when I feel insignificant. But now, I wonder if it can’t also speak to life and its changing seasons, when strength no longer keeps pace with even the of smallest things. I think my frustration button wasn’t so much an interruption. It was an opportunity for invitation. An invitation to acknowledge that knowing what to do doesn’t guarantees the ability to do it. An opportunity to ask for and then receive help without apology, and then skip off into some new place in my life.

I don’t suppose I have a conclusion to all of this. Just a noticing reflection about buttons, about muscle memory, about helpful hands with the small things, and perhaps a quiet sense that God may be paying closer attention to the small things and the small moments in my life than I imagine.