Who outside this house took on something hard for me this year?
Pilgrim, the made-up traveler from every Day 2 this month, was still standing at the window of the Room of Joy, looking at the higher mountain and the small light near its top.
Behind Pilgrim, the room had started to talk. It was the same four voices from the hallway, but they had changed their tune. "You've earned this chair," said Pleasure, from the seat by the fire. "There's enough food here to last forever," said Plenty. "Everyone here already knows your story," said Pride. "Nothing out there can touch you in here," said Power. All four were saying the same thing: stay.
Pilgrim looked down. Far below, in the valley, was a round room with four bright doors, and people were going in and out of them, around and around.
On a peg beside the second door, the one next to the window, hung something Pilgrim hadn't noticed during the feast: a wooden yoke. Pilgrim lifted it onto both shoulders. It was heavier than it looked, heavier than the bag had ever been, but it fit as if someone had carved it for Pilgrim alone. The bag had held what Pilgrim was waiting for, but the yoke was made for work. Standing there with it on, Pilgrim knew something the apple tree back home had always known. This is what I'm for.
Pilgrim closed both eyes and looked up. What do I actually want? The chair was real, and so was the food. But Pilgrim wanted the mountain. And these voices? Pilgrim had heard them before, behind every door that looped. Then Pilgrim opened both eyes. "Ten more steps."
Before going, Pilgrim looked back once, across the room to the plain wooden door Pilgrim had come in through, and thought about the narrow hallway behind it. It had been hard and dark and lonely. But it had been the right path the whole time, and now Pilgrim knew its real name. It was the agape path, the kind a person walks the way a tree bears fruit: for someone else.
Pilgrim left the bag where it had fallen and opened the second door. On the other side was another great round room, higher up the mountain than the first, with four big, bright doors and their tall gold letters.
Pilgrim knew this kind of room. So Pilgrim did what the first one had taught: turned away from the bright doors, closed both eyes, and waited for the glare to fade. The far corner was still dark. But Pilgrim knew there was usually a narrow door in a corner like that, and went looking along the wall with both hands until they found a frame, and then a latch. There was no lamp beside it. Anyone who didn't already know to look would walk right past.
Pilgrim went back to the feast table, took one of its lamps, lit it, and set it on a stand by the narrow door. Pilgrim thought about the lamp in the first round room, the one that had always been burning, and about the basket on the step back home with no name on it. Somebody had done this before.
Pilgrim left no name. Then Pilgrim opened the narrow door and stepped through.
That's the last part of Pilgrim's story.
Pilgrim left home asking, What am I actually for? The story answers it with a yoke on a peg. Jesus once said, in Matthew's account, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." A yoke is the wooden frame a farmer fits over an animal's shoulders so it can pull a load. Nobody puts one on to rest. So "easy" is a strange word for it. The word translated "easy" usually means kind or good. The picture many readers see in it is a yoke carved to fit: still work, still weight, but work the wearer was shaped for.
Agape is the work you were made for. That's why the hard path was the agape path all along, and why Pilgrim could leave the bag on the floor and still carry something heavier. When Jesus was asked which command mattered most, he named two together: love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the shape of the yoke. It's heavy, but it fits.
It also explains why Pilgrim left the Room of Joy. Joy is a real arrival and worth celebrating. But agape is the choice to set out again, toward a higher good and for the sake of whoever comes next. And most of us didn't walk this year's path alone. Somebody outside our house picked up part of the weight with us and stayed with it.
Who outside your house took up a weight for you this year, and stayed with it?
Each person takes one red paper star.
On the front, write the name of someone outside your house who carried part of a hard load with you this year: a friend, neighbor, teacher, coach, coworker, or grandparent.
On the back, write what they took on and how long they stayed with it. "Thank you for coaching me through every practice after my knee surgery, all the way to the last game."
Tape it near the top of the tree, writing toward the wall. Red stars stay on the tree.
Kids' story: read "Pulling as One" together, from The Overflow Adventure in Wanderful Woods.
Time: 15 to 20 minutes. The Heart takes about three minutes to read aloud.
With kids: ask, "Why did Pilgrim leave such a nice room? Why did Pilgrim leave a lamp?" A child can draw the person who helped carry something with them, or tell you what to write.
Pilgrim's story: this is the last part. If someone asks who lit the first lamp, the story never says. That's on purpose.
Hello, my wonderful story friends! Last time, a big storm came, and Mr. Moose went out into it even though he didn’t want to, and came back a walking woodpile. Now the storm is over, and the friends are going to find the little dark home.
Have you ever tried to do something with a friend where you both had to go the same speed? Let’s go see how Mr. Moose and Mr. Monkey pull the sled.
The storm had blown itself out in the night. In the morning, the whole woods was buried in deep, soft, brand-new snow, so deep that Benji could jump in and disappear completely, with only his ears poking out.
“Hee hee,” went Benji, from somewhere under the snow.
The friends had a plan. They would take the little dark home everything it needed. A lantern with a candle inside, lit from the fire at the Moose home. A bundle of firewood. A pot of soup. Two warm blankets. They put it all on Daddy Monkey’s big wooden sled.
The sled was very heavy.
“I’ll pull it!” said Mr. Monkey. He grabbed the rope and pulled with all his might. The sled didn’t move. Mr. Monkey’s feet slid out from under him, and he ended up lying flat on his tummy in the snow, still holding the rope.
“Hee hee hee! It’s too heavy for one!”
“Then two,” said Mr. Moose.
Daddy Monkey had been watching. He went into his workshop, and there was a lot of sawing and tapping, zzt-zzt, tok-tok-tok, and when he came out, he was carrying a wooden harness. It had two loops, side by side, one for each of them, so they could pull the sled together.
But the first harness didn’t fit. Mr. Moose’s loop was too low, and Mr. Monkey’s loop was too high. When they put it on, Mr. Moose was bent over with his nose in the snow, and Mr. Monkey was lifted right off the ground, dangling with his feet kicking.
“I’m flying!” said Mr. Monkey. “But I’m not pulling!”
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Mr. Moose, from down in the snow.
So Daddy Monkey took it back to his workshop. More sawing. More tapping. And this time, he made it just for them. One side high, for a tall moose. One side low, for a small monkey. He shaped the wood to fit Mr. Moose’s shoulders, and he shaped the other side to fit Mr. Monkey’s.
They put it on. It fit.
“It’s heavy,” said Mr. Monkey.
“But it fits,” said Mr. Moose.
And off they went, pulling the sled out of Sunny Square toward the far edge of the woods. The other friends came too: Bruno and Hazel and Dottie, Benji and Shiloh and Ricky and Percy.
But very soon, there was a problem.
Mr. Monkey was so excited to get there that he pulled fast. Mr. Moose pulled slow and steady, the way he did everything. And when one side of a sled goes fast and the other side goes slow, it doesn’t go straight. It goes around.
They went around in a circle. Then another circle. Then another one.
“Why are we back at the Wishing Tree?” asked Hazel.
“We’re making a snow donut!” said Mr. Monkey, looking at the big round track in the snow. “Hee hee hee!”
“Haw haw haw!” went Bruno. “A snow donut!”
Sammy came zipping around the donut track the other way. “What falls down all winter and never gets hurt?” she called. “SNOW!” And she zipped off before anybody could answer.
“Ha! Ha!” barked Dottie, and flopped down in the snow on purpose, to see if it was true. It was.
Mr. Monkey stopped. He looked at the far edge of the woods. They had to get there. The little dark home was waiting. He wanted to pull harder, faster, right now.
But Mr. Moose was thinking. It wasn’t about pulling harder. They were both pulling hard. It was about pulling the same.
“Mr. Monkey,” he said. “When you step, I’ll step. Every time. Let’s say it.”
“Step,” said Mr. Monkey.
“Step,” said Mr. Moose, at the same time.
Step. Step. Step. Step. Mr. Monkey took small fast steps, and Mr. Moose took big slow steps, but they stepped at the very same time, every time. And the sled went straight. Straight out of Sunny Square, straight across the meadow, straight through the deep snow.
The friends walked alongside, saying it with them. “Step! Step! Step!” Even Percy said it, and Percy had never pulled anything in his life.
By the afternoon, they had come all the way to the bramble patch.
It was a big tangle of prickly bushes, all covered in snow, and nobody ever went through it. The far side of it was where the dark home was. But the brambles were thick, and the sled couldn’t get through.
The friends looked at each other.
“I can help with this part,” said Bruno. And he did. He held the prickly branches back with his big paws, very carefully, one at a time, so nobody got scratched. Hazel stamped the snow down flat behind him to make a path. Dottie went ahead with her nose down, sniffing out the way. Ricky walked in front, pointing out the safest way.
And Mr. Moose and Mr. Monkey pulled the sled through, step, step, step, along the path their friends made.
Then, right in the middle of the brambles, the sled went over a big snowy bump. It bounced up. And the lantern on top bounced right off and landed in the snow, fffft. The little light went out.
Everybody stared at it.
“Oh no,” said Ricky softly.
The lantern was dark. The fire from the Moose home was all the way back on the other side of the woods. It was getting late. There was no way to go back for more light before dark.
Mr. Monkey felt it in his chest, heavy. They had pulled all this way to bring a light. And now they didn’t have one.
“We can’t light anything now,” he said.
Mr. Moose looked through the last of the brambles. And there it was, just ahead. A tiny little home, tucked under a fallen log, with a tiny round door and a tiny round window. It was dark.
“We can’t bring the light,” said Mr. Moose slowly. “Not today. But we can still bring everything else.”
So they pulled the sled the last few steps, and Mr. Monkey knocked on the tiny door. Tap, tap, tap.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the tiny door opened, just a crack.
Inside was a very small, very old mouse with soft gray fur and tiny round seeing glasses, a lot like Tessie’s, leaning on a little stick. She looked up at all of them: a moose, a monkey, a bear, a horse, a dog, a bunny, a sheep, a raccoon, and a pack rat, standing in the snow outside her door.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Nobody has knocked on my door in a long, long time.”
“Hello,” said Mr. Monkey. “We saw your home from the top of Lookout Ledge. It was the only dark one. We came to bring you a light. But our light went out.”
The old mouse looked at the lantern. Then at the sled, with the firewood and the soup and the blankets. Then at all of their faces.
“Well,” she said softly, and her whiskers trembled, “you’ve brought me plenty. More than plenty. My name is Granny Mabel. Won’t you come in?”
That night, back home, the friends painted red stars and hung them near the top of the pine. Mr. Moose painted Bruno on the front. On the back, he painted big paws holding back the brambles, so nobody got scratched.
“What a day!” said Mr. Monkey. “Daddy made a harness, and the first one made me fly. We made a snow donut, and then we said ‘step, step,’ and went straight. Bruno held the brambles. The lantern fell off and went out. But we found the little home, and it’s Granny Mabel’s.”
Mr. Monkey whistled, and Mr. Moose hummed, and together they sang:
We are better together,
Moose and Monkey forever.
And by the Moose home door, the wooden harness hung on a peg, one loop high and one loop low, still a little bit warm from pulling.