I park my truck in front of the same gate every time I go to the barn to feed and water the animals.

If you just glance at it, you might not notice anything unusual. It looks square and upright and serviceable as it stands there between its posts; just an ordinary gate guarding the entrance to a fallowed field full of compost piles.

But if you look carefully, or should you go to open the gate, you will realize it is held together with string. Those strong metal pipes are standing only because they are tied with twine from some hay bales.

Through decades of service -- swinging wide for tractors, shutting tight to hold back cattle, I've watched this once shiny and sturdy gate grow tired. Last year its welds finally gave way and it spent the season half-hanging, half-heaped on the ground while tall grass wove up through its bars. I picked it up and tied it back together sometime in November... because I felt bad for it.

I relate to this gate.

When I started farming, I felt a lot like a new gate – strong and ready to serve. Nearly two decades later, I’m still here, doing a job I love. But I’ve also grown tired and come apart in a few places. In some ways, I am figuratively holding myself together with twine and hoping no one will look closely enough to notice.

Having admitted that, I’ll also admit I'm not exactly sure where I’m going with this or why I feel the need to write to you about it. I’m a farmer so I guess I'm supposed to spend my days tending to land and animals to feed people. Talking about things like this feels a little outside my lane.

But maybe it doesn't have to be that simple. Good farming means noticing connected systems and caring for all the parts in order to better the whole. If I think about people (including myself) as part of the whole, whatever is going on inside our human hearts and minds deserves consideration.

So here's something I’ve noticed lately - nearly everyone I talk to feels a little broken. We all seem to have at least one crack in some part of our internal structure and we are walking around tied-together or patched-up inside while thinking we need to keep it a secret.

But what if we don't? What if it’s okay to let the breaks and repairs show? After all, there is beauty in a mended gate... or a mended life. It's proof we don’t give up.