Why We Need Forgotten Stories
A solemn little one-room church in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains has stood empty for nearly a hundred years. The doors hang in open, welcoming silence, the pews and pulpit still in place like they’re waiting for familiar voices to echo off the plank walls. There have been stories in this place. Generations of worship and weeping, baby laughter, passionate vows, and whispered gossip, all silent and forgotten. Even here, where thousands of tourists wander in and out every year, most of the stories will never be heard again. That’s true for almost all words spoken since the beginning of time. Few stories make it past a generation or two. Most words are born and die in quiet corners without ever finding a stage. Does that hiddenness make them less valuable? As a...
Read MoreThe Benediction
Dear Charleston Lady whose bright eyes have seen nine decades, We saw you before you saw us. You leaned in heavy concentration on your walker, your face soft and lovely and your perfectly pink lips pursed as your gentle caregiver encouraged you forward. You turned our way when we paused to let you cross the sidewalk, and your look of curiosity blossomed into wide-eyed, open-mouthed recognition. You knew us. Or at least you knew what it was like to be us. Maybe for a moment it was you strolling hand-in-hand down the sidewalk with your man, your red summer dress catching the seacoast breeze. Maybe it was your own handsome husband stealing grateful glances at his bride, calculating the weight of God’s faithful goodness over the years. Maybe for a second your back...
Read MoreA Gift Like Matthew
Everybody needs to know someone like my cousin Matthew. A traumatic premature birth left Matt with catastrophic brain damage, and his doctors believed he wouldn’t live much past his teens. He turned 40 this year. As a quadriplegic, Matt can’t walk or even roll over in bed unassisted, he can’t care for any of his own needs, and he struggles to speak clearly. And he’s one of the best humans I know. Matt’s a grin machine on wheels. He’s passionate about his church, his favorite restaurant, his day program, and Barry Manilow. In a social climate choked with anger and opinions, Matt is fresh air because he’s exceptional at two things: loving and being loved. Every Labor Day weekend for well over a hundred years, our family has gathered on a Kentucky hillside to play...
Read MoreStill
I mowed the lawn with a vengeance this morning. I mean an actual vengeance. Like, “How dare you sit there so smug and tall and defiantly bushy?!” I needed to have dominion over nature in some way, and the grass was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because here we are in a spot few of us could have foreseen at the hopeful beginning of this year: the whole world held hostage by a few runaway bits of RNA. And, just like that, no more school or church or ballet classes or prayer group. No more travel, no visits with our parents, no concerts or field trips or coffee with friends. Only an indefinite stretch of cloistered days that just might have this extrovert chewing holes in the wall and hugging random trees in our yard before it’s all over. My husband and...
Read MoreThe Gravy Promise
We didn’t need words. We had chicken, fresh off the grill and perfectly juicy. We had corn on the cob, roasted garlic zucchini, and deep amber honey dripping off buttery biscuits. We had some gentle quiet at the end of a week of sweet chaos, with their family and ours all under one roof. And we had memories of meals shared on the other side of the Pacific, where a steady thread of holidays and birthdays, weekday dinners and afternoon iced coffees had first woven us together. As the food disappeared, the words came like a slow tide. We stayed long at the table and talked about graduating kids and losing parents and about how grief feels anything but natural. The next day our friends got on a plane and flew back to where God has them for this season, and we stayed...
Read MoreAgain and Again
We’re in a season of some pretty big change in our house. Our oldest is leaping from childhood into the strange new world of college classes, car insurance, and grown-up decisions and responsibilities. And for the first time in his ministry career, my husband is serving primarily adults instead of teens. He’s upgraded his goatee to a full beard and his office décor from a plunger in a vase (seriously) to coordinating wall art and real, live potted plants. I love my new role with Wycliffe Women of the Word – like really, really LOVE it – but after years of homeschool and coffee dates and leading Bible studies and writing mostly whenever the whim hit, it feels weird to have deadlines and an editor and a swanky new podcast on the horizon. (I told my unendingly...
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