When Nate came out of law school in 1972, he was hired by the trust department of American National Bank in Chicago’s Loop. I was glad to be moving back to the Chicago area, and he was thankful to be starting his career in a big city.

I remember the day we bought his first briefcase, a plain black leather model with expandable pockets and niches for pens.  We waited while the shopkeeper embossed Nate’s initials near the handle, and from there we went and picked out a new suit.

After he began working, I loved walking from our second-floor apartment to meet him at the train each evening. Picking him out from a sea of suit-clad, briefcase-carrying commuters never failed to make my heart flutter. “Oh, there’s mine!”

He loved going to work and made friendships during those first years that were still current when he died 37 years later. But as the decades passed, Nate began to label his work routine a “rat race.” Career goals, once met, had been withdrawn, and his enthusiasm had waned.

Work was a means to an end, and he lived to come home. The luster had gone from boarding the commuter train and parading across the Loop with others running the same race. Yet he never wavered in his commitment to go. Even after the tumultuous collapse of his real estate company, he didn’t stay home even one day but rented a single-room office downtown, arranged for a phone, packed his briefcase and went to work.

When we moved to Michigan, his commute time doubled. But ever an advocate of riding trains, he daily boarded the South Shore Line for a journey from Michigan to the Loop. Amazingly, he didn’t mind, despite low energy and serious back pain. He took the 6:20 AM train to work the day we received his cancer diagnosis, and the next morning, against all logic, he climbed on the train again.

Jesus never experienced the pressure of a fast-paced commute with masses of people, but he definitely knew stress. His response was to decompress with the Father, separating himself from others and pulling close to his Sustainer. Amazingly, that same stress-reducer is available to us today with the identical benefit. Jesus successfully dealt with the burdens of his life by sharing them with God, and we can do the same. The invitation still stands. If we choose to go-it-alone, we step away from our most valuable resource.

Today I traced Nate’s commuter footsteps back into the rat race, riding the South Shore train to the Loop. Realizing the enormity of his commitment to continue commuting and working, I was emotionally moved while bumping along the rails.

What I did today took effort (finding the schedule, watching the clock, driving 19 miles to the station, waiting for a parking spot, hassling with the ticket machine), but he did this daily. I was making the journey for recreational reasons, but he did it to meet the demands of a pressure-cooker job.

My admiration for Nate’s willingness to run the rat race for his family knows no bounds. And it’s nice to know he has finally decompressed 100%.

“Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.” (Luke 6:12)