The Board

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(This was written in my journal 3 weeks before we left PNG)

I have always had personal projects so why should PNG be any different? Due to lack of material and my short stay, my options were limited. I had been working with a lot of wood and had made a few runs to the lumber yard when my project hit me- "Why not shape a surfboard?" There was plenty of light weight wood and my first board only took me 8 years to finish. For the next few days I formulated my plan. How was I going to get the rocker? What am I going to use to cut out the shape? Where am I going to get the shape? Do we have a planer? Am I going to try and hollow it out? Will they let the board come into Australia? All in all it was over a week of strategizing before I even went and picked up the wood. My dreams of surfing Australia and New Zealand lay somewhere in a pile down at one of the lumber yards.

The yard didn't''t exactly have balsa, but they did have some light wood. I bought all they had ( which wasn't very much) and hoped it was enough. My board was going to be a 5' 6" fish. I did the math on the last board I shaped and it came out to about a foot per year being completed so I figured I had 5 and a half years of shaping to do in the next 6 weeks. The shorter the better.

Amidst my other "duties" I found time to work on the board. Waking up early, working during lunch, and staying in the shop after work allowed me to widdle away at my project. Time was of the essence. This dawned on me differently just a few days ago.

I was starting to get stressed with the amount of time we had left in PNG. I needed to finish a bed for a missionary, I had a porch to wrap up on a building, and we were leaving for the bush in a few days. It occurred to me that  I may be trying to do too much. Then it occurred to me that I may be trying to do too much of the wrong thing.

I so much wanted to finish my board that I neglected the bed. My porch could have gone faster and I could have moved on to a different section of the building. I was standing over my board when I felt that I shouldn't finish it. We had come to PNG for a reason and our time was limited.

After deciding to be done with the board, I looked back at the situation and laughed. My board had consumed my mind for the last few weeks, it was made up of several different kinds of wood because I couldn't find enough of the right stuff, and it weighed over 60 pounds. Not exactly a dream board to surf the world with. I also thought that this experience was a condensed version of what life is like. We are here for a short time. If we don't focus on what we are here for, we won't accomplish our task and may end up with a makeshift life that doesn't quite match up to what we dreamed it was going to be.