Everyday Valentine's Day

 If I’m being honest, it’s hard to pin down an actual date or moment when you just “know” this relationship is different. Truth is, there are usually a number of moments that cause you to take notice and then cumulatively, one day, it all comes together and you know this is “the one.” I can’t speak for Honey and when/where/what those moments were from her perspective, but from mine, there are about ten of those moments. The day we met — I was captivated from the first look. The first date — she showed up with Kool Aid dyed purple hair, ate my ice cream cone and we watched a meteor shower, shooting stars, from the hill overlooking the place we now live. We almost kissed, but we just held hands. Even now, tears fill my eyes when I look up toward that hill and think of how that moment made me feel. The first time we were apart — I took her to breakfast at the Skyline Cafe before school that morning because she was leaving as soon as school got out. Our first New Year’s Eve together — after being apart for weeks and unable to connect with each other for hours due to being lost in Tupelo (remember there was no GPS or cell phones then). We reunited and it felt like the reviving of life in the valley of dry bones from Ezekiel. The next New Year’s Eve we got married. There are half a dozen more, but those belong to us and I’m not going to share them, but I do have one more I want to share.

I knew something had changed when we celebrated our first Valentine’s Day together. That night I cooked her a candlelight dinner, chicken parmesan with garlic bread and fettuccine Alfredo and Welch’s sparkling grape juice. In my eighteen years of life I had never cooked a meal for myself, much less anyone else, which tells you just how serious this relationship had become. In hindsight it should have been obvious, and looking back at choices my parents allowed me to make following that night, I’m pretty sure it was obvious. We weren’t just two kids dating, or children playing house, we were in the genesis of an adult love, not yet ready to bloom, but certainly planted and taking root.

Kierkegaard said life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards. That's certainly true for this story. Everyone close to me knows I love to cook, but only now am I able to see the ingredients that created this culinary fascination. My love of cooking matured over time, but my desire to see that look on her face was born that night. When she saw the table and tasted the food I saw something in her I’d never seen before, in her or anyone else, and thirty years later my appetite for it remains insatiable. I don’t know what to call it or how to describe it, other than to say I think it was love. Not love for me, but feeling loved, if there's even any difference. George Strait said it best, “You look so good in love.” I’d never seen that before and I’d never experienced the way it made me feel, but I’ve been chasing it ever since.

These days I prefer to make my own red sauce and Alfredo sauce from scratch, as opposed to the jar of Ragu and Lipton pack of noodles I used in 1994. Honey is the expert in bread making so I leave that to her, but as recently as yesterday I cooked her one of her favorite dishes. I love to cook for her, placing my creations before her with the reverence and love of a sacrifice on an altar, and then I step back and watch for her reaction. It’s just a moment, a flash as quick, but also as bright, as the shooting stars we sat under that first night together, filling me with that same feeling I had when our fingers first touched and then intertwined. It’s true that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but that is a two way street. I learned that on our first Valentine’s Day together, and I’ve wanted every day to be Valentine’s Day for her ever since.

Eshet Chayil

 “Who can find a woman of virtue?” This is the question at the heart of the last chapter of the book of wisdom known to us as “Proverbs.” With all credit to Rachel Held Evans for introducing me to this understanding, the words that follow this question are more love poem of adoration than checklist of requirements. The phrase “virtuous woman” is better understood as “woman of valor.” It is a translation of the Hebrew phrase “eshet chayil” and is a sort of homage to the ancient epic war poems about valiant heroes of battle like Odysseus and Achilles from The Odyssey and The Illiad.

Much of the teaching I’ve personally heard on this text imposes an impossible to attain standard, and yet, historically it was the exact opposite. Some Jewish tradition says it was composed by Abraham as a eulogy to Sarah, while others believe it was written by Solomon to honor his mother Bathsheba. RHE introduced me to the idea that in some homes it was sung by the men of the home on the night of the sabbath meal as a means of praising and showing honor and gratitude to the women of the home. It wasn’t “this is how you should be” (prescriptive), but “this is what you are to me” (declarative). A love song, not a job requirement. If Proverbs 31 is to be a model in any way, it is a model provided by an ancient author to modern men, showing them how to notice, praise and appreciate the countless everyday works of the women in their lives, and how blessed they are to have them, be they wives, mothers, aunts, or sisters. The virtuous woman poem is not “hey ladies do all of this” but “hey guys, notice all they do.” In the Hebrew Bible, the arrangement of the books flows naturally from Proverbs 31 and its love poem to the eshet chayil, to the book of Ruth as an illustration of her in story form. Ruth is called an eshet chayil by Boaz, her future husband, in Ruth 3:11. 

Recently, Honey and I and some friends watched the release of season 4 of The Chosen in theaters. One thing that stood out to me in the three episodes we watched, which seem to be an intentional focus of the entire show, is the way the women around Jesus are honored and elevated. The scene that moved me to write this portrayed the wife of a character making it known to her husband in dramatic fashion, that her only desire is for him to follow Jesus, no matter what, no matter where, no matter the cost. Standing in the hallway after the showing, my mind drifted to the woman of valor in my life, and my heart longed to sing my own song of gratitude. I’m not a singer, I’m not a good songwriter, but I am a writer, so here is my best shot.

There are so many things about my Honey that I could say, which are true and worthy of praise, but are also seen and known by countless people, even near strangers. Her preternatural kindness and thoughtfulness, her generous gift giving, her fierce loyalty, her ability to adopt and master new skills, her raw honesty, her strength and resiliency. All of these are worthy of praise, but they are also obvious to most everyone. I wanted to share some insight into some of the amazing things that only I have been audience to.

For nearly 30 years, my Honey has trusted and followed me everywhere I’ve told her God wanted us to go. In thirty years together, I’ve made some pretty big, life changing decisions. In every one of them I was perfectly convinced it was at God’s direction. When I asked her to join me in those steps of faith she never once hesitated.

The first time I asked her to follow me as I follow Him, took her away from her support system — her mother, sister, best friend, church family, co-workers — to move to Memphis so that I could study to be a preacher. To fully appreciate the faith this took I need to round out the details. In July of 1996 she was married to a jerk of a man with a rapidly increasing drinking problem and little regard for anyone but himself. A few days later he was “born again” and “all in” with a faith that she’d never even seen him demonstrate, much less live by. We both had solid jobs, a one year old child, had just purchased our first home. What I was asking was for us to quit our jobs, sell our home, move away from our support system and depend upon the generosity of others for our financial support. Did I mention that when all of this came to fruition we also had a newborn baby? She never hesitated.

The next time I asked her to “Go from your country, your people and your household to the land I will show you” was fifteen years later. Once again, I was asking her to leave everything she had left once before. We both quit good jobs, left our family, friends and church family and sold her house by the creek on our family farm. The destination this time was South Georgia, where once again we would depend upon the generosity of others for our financial support. We lived in South Georgia, but I regularly took my family to Central America, usually in some of the most poverty stricken or dangerous countries and cities in the world. 

In time, I asked her to leave again, and this required her moving from what she considers her dream home. Our time away led to new friends who became family and then I asked her to leave them behind to follow me to North Alabama and closer to the land of my nativity. As always, whether to Memphis or Georgia or Central America or Florida or Alabama, she always took my hand and walked right beside me, trusting that if I told her this is what God wanted us to do, we were doing it, period. We’d figure out the how and the details along the way, or He would simply open the doors and pave the way for us. Don’t misunderstand, every single one of these steps was filled with more blessings than I have time to illustrate, but those came later. What came first was the step of faith where nothing was certain, and it always meant that something of value had to be left behind.

The last time I asked her to follow me at His guidance is perhaps the biggest “ask” of all. We are nearing fifty, the kids are grown, the grandchildren have come, money was good, life was stable and dare I say, easy. Honey has a sixth sense that is astonishing, no matter how many times I’ve witnessed it. She can pick up on things long before they come to light, so she probably saw it coming. I asked her to follow me as I abandoned my career of twenty-five years. Despite a 60% pay cut, even though it meant moving into an 180 square foot converted shed, she said, “Let’s do it.” 

Who can find a woman of virtue? I did, and her value is far greater than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. Her husband praises her: “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.” A woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Beauty Will Save the World

 

I was thirty-six years old the first time I visited an art museum. The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. To be brutally honest, I thought art was stupid. It was the kind of thing people did if they couldn’t hit a curveball. You’ll have to forgive me if I had a grudge against art, it almost kept me from graduating high school. Just before the Christmas break of my Senior year, my guidance counselor sat me down and explained to me that I was lacking a half credit in art that was required to graduate. The reason I was lacking this credit was because during my freshman year I was thrown out of art class on the first day for making a sarcastic and disrespectful comment about art. Nearly four years later it came back to bite me.

I wasn’t taught to hate art, it was just kind of a byproduct of the environment I grew up in. No one that I was around on a regular basis though much of art. It was the kind of thing that hippies, druggies and weirdos cared about. You know, people who didn’t do important things, real work. That all changed for me when I stood in front of the painting “Crucifixion: Corpus Hypercubus.” Something about this painting capture my attention. I never understood the purpose of those benches I often saw in movies set in an art gallery, but now I did. Standing in front of this painting, I felt compelled to sit down and just stare, to look closely and examine deeply. I really can’t explain it to you, but that day, in that moment, for the first time, I “got it.” The rest of the day was a dream as I tried to soak up nearly four decades of neglect in one afternoon.

I’m not expert on art and I’m certainly not an artist myself, but in the twelve years since that day, I have come to love, appreciate and value art in all its forms, and it comes in many forms. I’ve witnessed the creation of art in kitchens and concert halls as often as on canvases. I’ve seen it in the cultivation of a garden and the construction of a sacred space. If you are one who is tempted to think of art as a wast of time and resources, I want you to think about this. Imagine a world without movies, tv, games, fashion, novels, music, photography, beautiful cars. If you are interested in any of those things, you should realize they are all the product of an artist.

Art is about expression, about things that can’t necessarily be spoken, but can be felt, often universally. God Himself is an artist, as anyone who has ever watched the sun rise or set knows. One of the most historically renowned artists, Michelangelo, said, “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” Art is our feeble and frail attempt to be like God, to create something from nothing more than our imagination or perspective. 

Our world needs art now as much as it ever has. Art is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Think about the last time you witnessed something beautiful that stopped you in your tracks. Remember how it made you feel, how it was transcendent and powerful, something you felt deep inside of you. If you can return to that moment, you can understand why Fyodor Dostoyevsky had his protagonist, Prince Lev Nikolyaevich Myshkin in the novel The Idiot, declare, “I believe the world will be saved by beauty.”

To borrow from Brian Zahnd, who wrote a book titled “Beauty Will Save the World”, “Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ. We do this best, not by protest or political action, but by enacting a beautiful presence within the world. The Western church has had four centuries of viewing salvation in a mechanistic manner, presenting it as a plan, system or formula. It would be much better if we would return to viewing salvation as a song we sing. The book of Revelation (from which George Frideric Handel found the lyrics for his Hallelujah chorus) doesn’t have any plans or formulas, but it has lots of songs. The task of the church is to creatively and faithfully sing the songs of the Lamb in the midst of a world founded upon the beastly principles of greed, decadence, and violence. What is needed is not an ugly protest, but a beautiful song; not a pragmatic system, but a transcendent symphony. Why? Because God is more like a musician than a manager, more like an composer than a clerk keeping ledgers.”

The opening section of the Sermon on the Mount is a sort of preamble to the kingdom of God. One we call the “Beatitudes.” The word is a sort of contraction of the words beautiful and attitudes, the beautiful attitudes that describe the beauty of a world where people are humble, meek, merciful, pure hearted, and peacemakers. True, there is so much ugly in the world, but there is also beauty, and where beauty is lacking, you can create beauty with nothing more than an attitude or action benevolently directed toward your neighbor. When you see beauty you see God and when you create beauty you are like your Father in Heaven.

All I Want For Christmas

 As a child of Chicken Creek, some things seemed out of reach when I was young. I was an only child and spent plenty of time alone. That’s not a sad statement, it was in solitude that I was able to cultivate an imagination and develop the ability to self soothe and be content in silence. Movies, books, video games, and television programs became a playground of sorts and in the amusement park of my mind I would encounter fascinating people and places that seemed so far from Pulaski. Somewhere in those years I became fascinated by the symphony. I’ve never been musical, but I have always been a lover of music. When I was sixteen three of my great loves converged and created within me a new fascination. As I mentioned, I loved movies, and I loved music, and I loved books, and one of my favorite books was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” In the fall of that year a movie version was released and I was all in. I saw the movie, multiple times, had the movie poster on my bedroom wall, and even bought the soundtrack. The soundtrack to the movie was all classical music, and this was probably the first time I’d ever listened to classical music. Around that time I started wanting to go to a symphony and hear classical music performed live. I can’t say why for certain, but I think it was because I believed that going to symphonies made you classy and dignified, two words that weren’t thrown around much in my circle of influence. Still, I really wanted to go to a symphony. As an adult, I often found myself traveling long distances, alone, at night. Most nights I would spend some of that time listening to classical music on public radio. The first piece of classical music to truly resonate with me was Mussorgsky’s “Pictures At An Exhibition.” It was also the first classical CD I purchased, intentionally. When I bought the Dracula soundtrack at sixteen I didn’t know it was going to be orchestral music only — just another of life’s happy, fortunate accidents. 

As my fascination with classical music began to grow, I encountered a symphony that spoke to me like no other, Handel’s “Messiah.” It was written nearly three hundred years ago, and it tells a story that is nearly three thousand years old. The symphony tells the story of Israel’s coming Messiah from the pages of the prophet Isaiah. Today, after decades of hoping, wanting, waiting, wishing, dreaming, I attended my first symphony, “Messiah” at the Schermerhorn in downtown Nashville. Sometimes in life, things we wait for fail to deliver and we are left crestfallen and disappointed, but this was not one of those days. It was everything I imagined and more. When my son later asked me what I thought of it, I told him it was painfully beautiful. The musicians, the vocalists, the conductor, the chorus were awe inspiringly talented performers. So many times I had to wipe away the tears streaming down my face, sometimes from the beauty of the performance and the message and sometimes from the pain of the story. Majesty and misery simultaneously. The morning began with a beautiful worship service and the symphony, at least for me, became another one. Today will be one of the days that I remember as one of the best days. A day when reality lived up to the hype. The cherry on top was getting to experience it all with the love of my life. Everything is better when shared — pain, pleasure, beauty, everything, except Oreo Cheesecake, that is best enjoyed alone.

This isn’t one of those humble brag things where I have an ulterior motive of wanting you to be ever so slightly envious of the life I’m living or validate my insecurities with comments like “That’s so amazing!” or “You’re so lucky.” Even if it was a humble brag it wouldn’t be very good one. Most people I know experience zero FOMO about me going to the symphony — we literally couldn’t give away our two extra tickets. I’m sharing this to call our attention to a woefully overlooked and undervalued part of life that I want to share with everyone: perspective. 

Today I have a couple of different perspectives that help me to see this Christmas season for what it is, a magical, undeserved, but greatly appreciated, gift. Perspective number one is all about Christmas past and Christmas present. This morning I thought about the Christmases we spent at the jail, just to see our incarcerated loved ones on a video monitor. We could have done the same thing with our phones, but going to the physical jail, knowing they were on the other side of the walls, brought the smallest degree of comfort that can come from being so close, though mingled with the pain of feeling so far. The only place sadder than a jail at Christmas is a cemetery at Christmas, and we’ve been there too. Though painful, these are the places that provide perspective. Somehow the lights twinkle a little bit brighter, the music is a little more joyous and the fellowship a little more comforting when viewed from that perspective today.

The first perspective is all about a humble and lamentable disposition, but this second one is a bit more literal. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve gotten to spend time with both of my grandchildren. Both of them stacked together are less than five feet tall, so you really have to get down on their level to enjoy them. With Rougaroux that means sitting in the floor, no matter how painful it is on your hips and back and no matter hard it is to get back up again. Christmas is beautiful from his level because everything is a joy, well almost everything. The word “no” in any capacity is not a joy for this little boy on the cusp of two. From his perspective Christmas is a bit weird, but a good weird. Suddenly there is a giant tree, filled with decorations, lights and gifts in the middle of his living room, but he isn’t supposed to touch it. If you’re wondering how enthusiastic he is about the “look but don’t touch” policy, let me share two little details with you. 1) For awhile, when he would walk by a tree and spot a ball shaped ornament around eye level, he would swing his right hand like a baseball bat and launch the ornament across the house. 2) All of the ornaments within reach are now held onto the branches with a rubber band. True story. Besides the tree in the midst of his living room, ornately decorated with irresistible forbidden fruit, there is the random appearance of his beloved Gumbo, adorned in a Santa Claus suit, bearing gifts that can be as enthralling as a truck or as pedestrian as a shirt. Despite the bizarre and confusing rituals, and the occasional “no”, he seems to love the holiday as a whole. 

And then there is Nola. This little lady doesn’t think much about anything yet. Her timeline consists of only about two hours. Eat, changed, sleep, repeat. In the rare moments where she is wide eyed and observing this new universe, she mostly wrinkles her forehead, seemingly perplexed by the things she encounters, though occasionally entertained by things like ceiling fans and Christmas lights. Our time together is much more subdued than my time with Rougaroux, and less dangerous since there are no flying objects. My day in Nashville was such a joy, such a blessing, so much fun, and the fulfillment of decades of desire, but from the perspective of Sunday morning at about 5:30 am, it was the second best thing I did today. The best part of the day was sitting and drinking coffee, watching Nola sleep, with seasonal worship music playing in the background, a fireplace in the foreground, and a beautifully illuminated Christmas tree as the centerpiece. All the pomp and circumstance of the symphony was merely the pretty paper in which this priceless and fleeting gift was wrapped.

Perspective is a priceless gift because it has the ability to make all the gifts in our lives priceless, whether great or small, common or rare. To borrow from Handel, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Halle-lujah!" That’s best I can say it, but it pales in comparison to the poetic way Beth Moore expresses it, so I’ll give her the last word. “Tears fill my eyes often these days and as often over awe and gladness as sadness. The gifts to be had here — stubborn beauties among thorns — grow sacred with age.”

From Scrooge To Santa

When I was about eight or nine years old I heard the nativity story for the first time. I grew up in a religious tradition that drew strict boundaries between the sacred and secular during December, so I was largely unfamiliar with the story, the songs or the imagery. This particular year my family broke with tradition and visited a local outdoor nativity play, complete with live animals. To say that it made quite an impression on me would be an understatement. After the play we returned to my Big Mama’s house and I can remember looking out the window at the night sky, hoping to see the star I’d just heard so much about. As you can imagine I was disappointed, but I wasn’t discouraged, in fact, I was fascinated. One of my greatest joys then, and greatest memories now, was listening to the Christmas records that Big Mama would play in the living room or her house. The living room was largely off limits to us kids, being the closest thing to a formal room that she had in her tiny house. The living room, unlike the den, was unspoiled by messy, grubby handed little children. The carpet was in good shape, the furniture looked new and there was a nearly coffin sized cabinet that housed a radio, eight track, and record player. The one time a year I was allowed in this room was during Christmas, when Big Mama would play her Christmas records. Those angelic sounding carols coming from her console stereo only fueled my fascination with this side of the Christmas tradition. This fascination would eventually fade into the background, being replaced by things more interesting to teenage boys, like baseball, video games and girls, but it would come roaring back unexpectedly in my forties. 

Oddly enough, the revival of my fascination with the nativity story began in sunny Florida, nearly ten years ago. There were many things I loved about life in Florida, but the winter holidays was not one of them. Growing up in Tennessee, Thanksgiving and Christmas had a certain look and feel meteorologically. The changing color of the leaves was met by cold nights and soon after, bare landscapes. Christmas just never felt like Christmas to this Tennessee boy in Floridian exile. At this point in my life, I had been living away from home and extended family for five or six years and I felt it most during the holidays. For most of my life, my holiday traditions were pretty deeply ingrained. Being a part of a very large family, holidays were crowded and loud and so much fun. During your formative years you don’t realize how important these traditions will become to you until the time when they are no longer available. Time moves on, children grow up, marry and move away, beginning their own families, older folks die and we all begin to drift into different directions. Every year, around Thanksgiving, I found myself longing for some connection to the holidays as I’d always known them back home. I needed to feel connected to a place in spirit that I was separated from in body, and suddenly, those songs and images from my childhood began to reawaken and call out to me.

Some backstory might be helpful here. For many years I was a Scrooge, a Grinch, when it came to Christmas. The only side of the season I saw was the receipts for purchase. My obsession was on how much it all cost and how much trouble it all was. I hated putting up the tree, the decorations and the lights. I hated the shopping. I hated the expense and the hassle. But that all began to change the first Christmas we spent in Florida, due in large part to a visit from our mothers. My Honey has always loved Christmas and she got it honest because her mother really loved Christmas. For Honey their visit was certainly a breath of fresh air and for me it was reinforcements. While I was at work during the day, Honey and our mothers transformed our sunny Florida home into a winter wonderland and it was magnificent. Perhaps it was the mixture of the beautiful decorations, having home come to us, and spending a few days enjoying a Seaside Christmas with our mothers, but my small heart grew three sizes that day. If my heart swelled during their visit, it would burst a few days later.

After the moms went back to Tennessee, leaving us with tableaus of Christmas past, I was standing at the kitchen sink, looking out the window, washing dishes and cooking dinner, while listening to Christmas music. I was very much in the Christmas spirit now and had pulled up a generic YouTube Christmas playlist to run in the background. In a sentimental sneak attack, the song “O Holy Night” as performed by David Phelps and the Gaither Family Singers, came on and took me out. I’m sure I’d heard the song before, I mean, who hasn’t, but I don’t know that I’d ever really listened to it lyrically. Standing in our kitchen, Christmas magic was being worked as memory, longing, and faith mingled together and the dam in my heart burst. Tears streamed down my face as I thought of Christmas past, was grateful for Christmas present and longed for another “Tender Tennessee Christmas” in the near future. I can tell you that my new found love of all things Christmas was born in that moment. 

In the days that followed, I found great comfort sitting in the early morning or late night hours, when it was still dark, drinking a cup of coffee, with only the light from the tree illuminating the room. I would sit, sip, and sing. Those traditional Christmas carols that Big Mama used to play — Silent Night, O Holy Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Away in a Manger, Do You Hear What I Hear, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Joy to the World — became a source of comfort and joy, to borrow a phrase. Those moments of solitude, faith, family and feelings mingled together in a magical way that was equal parts nostalgia and theology. 

Nearly a decade later, this is still my favorite time of year and I am all in for all things Christmas. I even enjoy going with Honey to Hobby Lobby and looking at all the Christmas decorations that invade every aisle, starting sometime around late September. For me, there is nothing better than sitting quietly, looking at the lights on a tree and listening to those beautiful old songs. They had the power to transport me back in time to a living room in Tennessee, a stable in Bethlehem, and to transform me from Scrooge to Santa.

“Long lay the world in sin and error pining

'Til He appears and the soul felt its worth

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

Fall on your knees; O hear the Angel voices!

O night divine, O night when Christ was born

O night, O Holy night, O night divine!

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His Gospel is Peace

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother

And in His name, all oppression shall cease

O little town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight

Happy, Happy Birthday Baby

 The first birthday we celebrated together was her 18th, December 7, 1993. We had only known one another for four months, but I’m pretty sure that was the night she fell in love with me — I had already fallen in love with her the day we met. We didn’t do anything amazing and had Instagram existed back then it probably wouldn’t have even warranted a photo, but it did create a memory that is still vivid three decades later. That night I took my record collection over to her house and I sang her Elvis, Conway Twitty and George Jones songs until the early morning hours. 

Subsequent years would be spent in more exciting ways, but I don’t know if they can top — at least in my mind — the first one….that is, until this one. The most mesmerizing way to view someone you love is to merely observe them doing what they love, and for Honey, what she loves is serving the people she loves. The circumstances surrounding the birth of our granddaughter have necessitated we stay with our children during the first few days since the baby was born. 

I told her last night that God always has a way of working with what we bring to Him. I can’t remember the last time she was able to sleep through the night and that played to her advantage this week. She’s gladly joined in to help with the overnight feedings and diaper changes that our sweet Magnola has needed. Additionally, she has cooked food, washed dishes, done laundry, played nurse and gone to doctor appointments, all with an ear to ear smile on her face. It’s not a burden or a chore, she genuinely loves it and thrives when she’s needed.

For Honey, service is always with a smile. Serving is her love language and she is fluent in love. Seeing Honey helping others is as natural as observing a fish in water or bird in flight. It was what she was created to do and she does it with a skill equivalent to an artist.

Recently a quote I came across has become one of my favorites, and today it reminds me of her. “The monk wakes at 4am to pray. The young mom wakes at 4am to warm a bottle. God meets them both.” She’s not a young mom, but she is a new grandmother, and there is nothing more divine than watching her with her grand babies. Time may erase our youth, but it engraves our lasting beauty. When I met her at seventeen I’d never seen anyone prettier, and watching her all these years later I’ve never seen anything more beautiful. Our first birthday together we were just children and this birthday we get to enjoy with our grandchildren. Every time I watch her with her grand babies I fall even more in love with her.

I’m reminded of a George Jones song thinking about her this morning. “Loving you could never be better than it is right now.”

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go sing her a song.

She's as sweet as Tupelo honey

She's an angel of the first degree

She's as sweet, she's as sweet as Tupelo honey

Just like honey, baby, from the bee,

The Border of Life and Death

 

Neither of my grandchildren were born in a conventional fashion. “Difficult” labor and delivery has kind of been a family tradition for my branch of the Britton family tree. When my mother delivered me it was only after more than a day of labor, followed by an emergency caesarean. My first son was born following a twenty-six hour labor and ended with an emergency caesarean. Our first grandson was delivered naturally, but he was also induced due to critically high blood pressure in his mother, resulting in a six week premature birth. He had to spend two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, and due to COVID protocols, we were unable to see him in person until he was discharged from the hospital. Most recently, our granddaughter was born, but not without extreme duress on the part of her mother. Three days after induced labor produced no baby, she was sent home, only to return two days later, beginning 24 hours of hard labor that ended in, you guessed it, a caesarean. As if to add insult to injury, her mamma endured all of this while having the flu and then had to make two more trips to the hospital for two more surgical procedures postpartum. Today I listened as the labor and delivery doctor described this as the most difficult one she had personally witnessed. I have witnessed enough births to be able to say without hesitation, in labor and delivery, our mothers straddle the border of death in order to drag us into the land of the living. There is a reason that delivering a child is referred to as labor, or if you prefer the old King James Version term, travail. Bottom line, creating, sustaining, and delivering a human life is so incredibly hard only God and women can do it. William Makepeace Thackeray said, “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

We didn’t have to wait two weeks to meet our granddaughter like we did with our grandson, but we did have to wait two days. Since mamma and baby were in flu protocol, no one was allowed into the room with them for a few days. Generously, the OB nurse offered to escort us outside the hospital so that we could see her through the window. As the five of us were walking back into the hospital, I stopped and looked back to snap this picture. There are two images in this picture, each of which represents polar extremes on the spectrum of life and death. 

On the right is the hospital window for the room that was housing this brand new life, just twenty-four hours old, that we were all there to celebrate, but on the left was the helicopter pad where my father, in the midst of a heart attack, was loaded up and flown to Murfreesboro just two months earlier. Fred R. Barnard taught us all that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll only share a few more with you here. 

I paused to take this picture because I wanted a reminder of the frailty, brevity, tragedy, and beauty of life. At once it can be both magical and horrible, or as Michael Franti says it, “Life is amazing, then it sucks, then it’s amazing again.” In October, I left my office, rushed to this very hospital and stood in the cramped ER exam room five, along with my mother, sons, father, and half a dozen doctors and nurses. They were working diligently to ensure that dad would survive the med-flight so that he could have the life-saving surgery an hour later. I’ve been in similar rooms with other people and their family more times than I can remember, so I’ve learned to maintain my composure and think clearly in these moments. I always considered it an occupational necessity to remain calm so I could minister to the people in the midst of their crisis, but on this day it was my family in crisis. As they prepared to wheel dad out of the room and to the helicopter pad, I remember looking at him and thinking, “This could be the last time I ever see my father.” Sitting here now I realize it sounds morbid to write this, but if you put yourself in that room it is a perfectly reasonable thing to think. On a day where we feared, if not expected, death would come to our family, we were graciously given the gift of life. Now, two months later, a mere thirty feet from the helicopter pad that played a part in saving my father’s life, we were standing outside the window, already in love with the new life we had been expecting, that we feared was going to be stripped from us. Sitting here tonight, I am grateful in both cases our fears were alleviated and our joy was made fully. 

The night before my granddaughter was born I spent a good bit of time in the chapel, praying a mixture of Scriptures from Isaiah, John, and Psalms. 

“Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the Lord. “Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God…Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. 

“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

“Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”

If this picture says anything it says the border between life and death is narrow and near, and we all walk it like a tightrope.