Late summer and early fall, you’ll find me out back splitting and stacking wood. It’s one of my favorite things — I’d barely call it work. Most days.

Today, for about ten minutes, it was work.

The wood had been seasoning for a year or so since it was bucked up from a downed tree, so it was splitting easy — until it wasn’t. I had one log that just would not give. I drove one wedge, then another, hammering with a sledge in the sun, running low on water, and getting nothing for it. No crack. No give. Just resistance.

So I hit it harder.

That’s usually my first move when something isn’t going my way. Not always — but often enough that I’ve come to recognize the pattern in myself. When effort isn’t working, my instinct is to apply *more* effort. Harder, not smarter. Blunt force instead of a better question.

Eventually I stopped. Set the sledge down, took a breath, and actually looked at the log instead of just attacking it.

That’s when I saw it — the grain wasn’t running straight through. It was knotted, forking, doubling back on itself in places. Somewhere in this tree’s life, a limb had grown out from here, or the trunk itself had split in two. The wood was carrying the shape of something that happened to it long before I ever picked up a wedge. I wasn’t splitting *with* the grain. I was fighting *against* the actual shape of the thing.

 Cutting Against the Grain

I couldn’t stop thinking about that afterward — where else am I doing this? Applying real effort, real muscle, in a direction that’s working against the actual shape of what I’m up against?

What’s it costing me when I do that?

I like things to go my way. When they don’t, I’ve been known to reach for white-knuckled effort — working harder instead of getting curious. I remembered a moment from years ago, training to be a whitewater raft guide. My canoe would get sideways at exactly the wrong moment, and I’d paddle as hard as I possibly could to muscle it straight. My trainer pulled me aside and said, “Jon — you’re a big guy. Strong. But do you think you’re stronger than that river? There are cubic tons of water moving past you. All you need to do is dip your paddle on the other side and gently draw.”

So much for looking like Neptune out 

The Better Question

Here’s what I think both moments were teaching me, underneath the obvious lesson about not forcing things: *what’s already happening in the place I’m trying to have an effect?

I think about this constantly in relationships. Where is something already at work in a person — a fear, a longing, an old wound, a pattern that made sense once — that I haven’t slowed down to notice yet? How do I ask a good question instead of applying pressure? How do I observe and hold space before I try to fix or push or convince? How do I stop and look around the log before I swing again?

There was something genuinely hopeful in the embodied version of this lesson — hopeful in a way that just *thinking* about it never quite gets me to. Living life on life’s terms, instead of the terms I’d prefer. I’m grateful I got something real out of an afternoon that, for a while, felt like throwing good energy after bad.

The Proof

The next log I picked up was massive — bigger than the one that had given me trouble. Old habit would’ve had me swinging away at it immediately. Instead, I stopped first. Walked around it. Looked at the grain before I ever set a wedge.

It was running straight and true, no forks, no old wounds hiding inside it.

One swing. Clean in half.

Same arms, same sledge, same amount of effort as before — but a completely different result, because I’d actually looked before I acted. That’s the part I don’t want to forget: the lesson isn’t “try less hard.” It’s “look first, then apply your strength where it’ll actually do something.”

An Invitation

This is so much of what happens between two people who love each other and still find themselves stuck. The love hasn’t gone anywhere — it wants to flow, the way it’s built to. But something’s blocking it. And usually, the honest thing is that there are good reasons the block is there. Old grain. Old forks in the trunk. Places where force has been tried before and hasn’t worked.

That’s the work we’ll be doing together at **Created for Connection: Autumn in Vermont**, October 3–4. We’ll slow down, look closer, and compassionately explore what’s blocking the flow between you and your partner — and find a way back to each other that doesn’t require anyone to white-knuckle it.

There’s still room. Details and registration at [flourishvt.com/retreats](https://www.flourishvt.com/retreats).