What We Forgot

Before we even got to the beach, but inconveniently after we left home, we realized we'd forgotten to grab a pack of butter from the fridge. 

And that's not all. 
Here's what else we didn't remember this year.

* coffee filters 
* the 35mm camera and zoom lens
* sunscreen lotion for faces
* steamer basket for shrimp
* Apple TV box and remote
* drink coozies
* diet Cokes

Now all in all, I can live without each one of these things. 

And I will live without the camera. The iPhone is good enough. I won't blow any prints into megapixel canvases this year, but as long as I can get a Christmas card out of the week, then we're doing OK. We can live without Apple TV, too. Heck, we have cable here! 

But if I don't have to live without butter and coffee filters and cute coozies for my beer, then I won't. The local grocery has it all. And my new coozie actually has a bottle opener  built into it. :) 

What's one thing we did remember that wasn't even on the list? 

A sweet basil plant. It survived hours in the car and is flourishing on the deck. Tomorrow I'll clip some leaves to eat with a fresh tomato from Sticky Bottom Produce. And as I crack some fresh pepper and sea salt over it, I'm sure I'll remember something else we forgot.  

A Change in Perspective

Today I sat in the back seat for the first time as my son drove us down Hatteras Island's NC12.  
...Across the Bonner bridge.
...Through the village towns.
...Flying 55 mph on the stretches in between.
I gave up my shotgun seat so that Curt could be the guide on the side as our learning-to-drive son experienced the stress (thrill?) of driving.

I'm willing to concede (now) that he did a marvelous job. He kept to the speed limit, didn't mind when hurried drivers passed him on the 2-lane road, and never smashed into a trash bin or pedestrian. He even made a left-hand turn from Harbor House Seafood onto Route 12 to get us to our home for the week. If you know me, you know how I feel about left-hand turns.

There's something about your son driving you to your vacation destination that changes your perspective. For example, here in our beach house, we have cable TV, which means we have HGTV. So even reruns of House Hunters excites us beyond imagination. This blondie hunting for a house with her sensible husband is worried about all the steps separating the levels in the split level they are eyeballing. There are four levels in this house,  maybe a stretch of 6 or 7 steps in between each. And she's worried about her three littles navigating the steps.

Really?! Wait till your son drives you to the beach! What is a tumble down a tiny flight of steps compared to a drive at 55 across a bridge where pelicans regularly dive-bomb your car?

 Clearly, this vacation is all about a change in perspective.

Already, Camden has crossed the threshold from little-boy-who-wants-to-be-big to Teen Boy. He is handsome. He is funny. He is exuberant and confident and trying to find his way across the bridge between Kid World and Adult World.

To accomplish that, he needs me to change my perspective. And that's hard.

I liked it when he was a little tyke in yellow rubber boots who refused to wear shorts and tee shirts in the dead of summer. I was tickled pink watching him position his Star Wars guys in the Dream Barbie house where we vacationed.  I was comfortable exerting my control over his little self. Control. Over. Him.

And now I'm OUTTA CONTROL.

This boy wonder is exerting control and I am helpless to do a thing about it. In fact, I'm called NOT to do a thing about it.

That's part of this change in perspective, I think. I'm not to control him. I'm to control myself. Shudder. I hate that. 

As I grow with the Lord, I learn that life is not all about me. 

And I have a hard time letting go. 











But look at this boy. Look at this child of God.

Does the Lord not have a bigger, better plan for him than I have? Of course He does.

This Boy Wonder, this apprentice, this Padawan is in serious training. He's learning to be a man, a husband, a father. And somewhere along the way, I have to stop being the controlling mother and let him pursue that destiny.

I wanted that for my own husband.

And I want that for my son.

Go, young Padawan. With my love and my blessing.
And with my complete undoing as you learn to be a man of God.

Where I'm From

I am from coal,
from Crest and four-leaf clovers.
I am from blazing coke ovens
that looked like bear caves
stretched across the mountains.
I am from the four-o'clocks,
the arches of France,
a foxhole in the Bulge.
From hollers and crooked roads 
and the Trail of the Lonesome Pine. 





I'm from batons and silver charms
      from Minnie and Pearl
I'm from love letters
      and letter jackets, 
from a car that didn't go backwards.
I'm from Rock of Ages
     and John 3:16,
     choir robes, VBS, and potluck dinners.

I'm from Blackwood and Bonnie Blue,
corn bread and bacon gravy,
green beans and fat back.
From black lung my grandfathers
      inhaled deep inside the mountain,
and embroidered tea towels that say
their, share, spare, heir.

I'm from three hat boxes and a yellowed scrapbook
filled with deckled edge pictures
and brittle newspaper clippings.
Moments frozen in time
before I was formed in the womb
of where I'm from.

        * Inspired by George Ella Lyon's Where I'm From

A Letter to Summer

Dear Summer,

     Although winter is my favorite season, you are my favorite time of the year.

     I love sleeping till 9:00 a.m.
     I love reading the Roanoke Times for an hour over two cups of coffee instead of 20 minutes over a cup of V-8 Fusion.
     I love loafing around in my jammies till noon.
     I love cleaning the toilets or vacuuming the stairs on a weekday because I have the time to spare.
     I love lunch with a friend at a restaurant 
and hours by the pool with the boys 
and late nights catching up on Netflix shows.
     I love coffee in the evening because it doesn't matter if I can't get myself to asleep at 10 p.m. 
     I love longer days and lazy mornings and lots of time to read grown-up books.
     
     I love you, Summer. 

Your friend,
Wendi

PS ~ Don't be jealous when I fall head over heels in love with autumn.
     

The Family Tree

I attended a funeral today for a man I didn't even know.

I left wishing I had.

I'm sure I've met distant cousin CA Flora in recent years. There was a reunion in the Tri Cities a few years back where Curt and I visited briefly, too briefly. And there was Dad's and Mom's funerals. And maybe even my sister's. The years are a blur, the wait by the caskets at Hagy-Fawbush Funeral Home reduced to a hazy series of flashes punctuated by Kleenex and the scent of carnations. But I'm told I met him. 

I just didn't know him.

There's a whole family tree of people I hardly know. 

Aunt Sandy sketched this up for me today before she and Aunt Dianne returned to Richmond. I learned that CA married their first cousin, Gladys Helen. There were 15 first cousins in my dad's family, and from what we can see, there look to be nearly 30 second cousins, including me. With this, I'm finally able to draw some lines in my brain, connect the cousins to the parents and then to me. I have faces to put with Facebook family. 

Which brings me back to CA Flora, whose passing drew 800 visitors to the Antioch Church of the Brethren in Rocky Mount yesterday. Today's service was about remembering a man known for absolute selflessness. (The very thing God's working on in me this season.) A child of God, brother, husband, father, uncle, cousin, friend. A servant to his church. A  Hokie, die-hard local sports fan, farmer, realtor. A man to be celebrated and remembered. A man I wish I'd known.

I'm thankful it's not too late to get to know the rest of the clan. 

420 Poplar Street

"A house that raised a family is so  much more than wood and shingles. It’s home to almost every memory of our younger lives. 
… Yes, technically a house is just a place. But at times like this, it sure feels more like a person." 

~ Steve Hartman, CBS News.

   We trekked home last month to empty the attic of the remnants of life at 420 Poplar Street. 

An assembly line of workers, 
from Curt in the attic 
to Camden on the ladder steps 
to Benjy at the bottom 
to me in the garage, 
well, what used to be a garage before Dad man-caved it, complete with an air conditioner/heater recommended by the foreman of the Holiday Inn job downtown. 

   We had it emptied in no time. The sorting is where things screeched to a near halt. And where things got a little emotional.

   I've known the house would be sold for weeks now. I'd celebrated it. No more paying property taxes on it. No more keeping up the insurance. No more worrying that the City of Norton would slap me with a fine for forgetting I had grass down there to mow. 

Michelle, Candie, and me, late 1970s

   The heart of my memories at 420 Poplar Street is wrapped up in papers imaged with Michelle and Candie and tied up with a bow that's one end Mom and one end Dad. The wrapping came undone in that garage as I freed the snapshots from yellowed tape holding them fast in their dusty frames.  

   The whole flood of memories swirled around me in a fuzzy haze of matte print Kodak 110s, faded 35 mm pix, and the occasional hazy Polaroid. 

   So real were they that I could smell the hot Christmas bulbs burning, the OFF! spray and sunscreen, the pork chop casserole and buttery cornbread. 

   And then I could see. 

   I saw Mom, scrambling eggs and baking buttermilk biscuits for weekend breakfasts, taking me shopping for Aigner sandals at Dave's, sleeping fitfully through a midnight game of tag on the roof, and lugging bags of books home from the Lonesome Pine Regional Library. (She had their phone number memorized so we could renew our books. So many were in our bags that we never finished them on time.)

 

   I saw Dad, sitting in the press box calling the plays for John I. Burton football, tinkering on his old MG in the garage (when it was really a garage), stressing over the town budget every May (and teaching me my first lessons in financial peace), and telling the corniest jokes I've ever heard. What I wouldn't do to hear a corny joke in his Andy Griffith-like voice right now. 

   I saw Michelle, insisting we name our new puppy Suzanne (she lost), playing with her Sunshine Family dolls while we watched Little House on the Prairie, dragging her appendix-less self to the prom mere hours after surgery (and looking like a star), and threatening, "I'm tellin'!" at every perceived injustice. 


   The memories faded as I untaped the last picture and added it to the stack. "I'm hungry," someone said. Yeah, I thought. I am, too. 
   
   So hungry I can smell the cornbread. 

   

Dancing Kings

   The most beautiful wedding on the planet happened today at Douthat State Park.

   And after the nuptials, dancing ensued. 

   Our boys were 

not

       bashful.

   At all.

Cupid Shuffling, never sure which foot to put where. I copied the Kings.

Camden showed off some smooth moves that do not at all reflect his DNA profile.

Do you see the admiration Young Padawan has for Old Palawan?

It was something to behold, that dancing Padawan Duo and the Gang.

It was like an early Mom's Day gift all wrapped up in teal 

and white 

and sweat. 

What a sweet, 

sweet day.

That's the way it was, and we liked it!

Now that Halloween has passed, I'm ready to consider Thanksgiving. 

   Fried turkey and southern green beans. 

   Sweet potatoes and yeast rolls. 

   Chocolate anything. 

   A comatose nap to digest it all.

I do not expect talk of the trappings of Christmas till I wake up on Black Friday. That's my decoration day. (Most certainly, not a time to shop.) But already, with my Halloween decorations still settling in their bin up in the attic, I'm hearing Christmas carols at Kroger, seeing Santa commercials on TV, and recycling the Target Toy Book from last Sunday's newspaper. It's still 70 degrees outside and we're already leap-frogging to Dec. 25?

Whatever happened to waiting? When I was a kid the Christmas season didn't even start till the tail end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. This was back in the day when the three networks on our get-up-and-change-the-channel-yourself TV aired the actual people and floats marching in the parade. As expected, Santa appeared every year at the end, marking the official beginning of the Christmas season. 

See, back then, it was the Thanksgiving St. Nick who heralded the call to Christmas. And we had plenty of time with only a mere month to prepare. Folks still managed to light up their house tops, chop down a tree to decorate, shop for presents, bake trays of sweets, and prepare hand-signed cards. All pretty much the things we do now, only we had 30 less days to stress about it all. That's the way it was, and we liked it.

Woodboogers Eat Doughnuts

My kids like to watch this show on Netflix -- Finding Bigfoot. I think it's utterly ridiculous. A bunch of crock. A noisy little bit of fiction that makes me cringe. People really believe this? (My faith in American TV viewers is at an all-time low since learning this summer that there is an actual television show that comes on actual television called Naked and Afraid. I'm not even gonna link it here. You are way too intelligent to check it out.)

So, my boys tune into this Bigfoot search periodically and I'm left to my own business of dusting furniture or grading papers or trying to read the Rick Bragg column in the back of Southern Living as a Chewbacca soundtrack plays in the background. Over and over and over and over again. Bigfoot and Chewbacca are apparently close cousins.

So, yeah, it's annoying on many levels. 

But then we went home to Norton, Virginia, last fall to bury my mom. And for once in a million moons, I was there when the Home Hardware was open.

(They used to be open on Saturdays. When they decided to close years ago, they warned my Uncle Mitchell, a Home Hardware regular, that they'd be closed that Saturday morning. He showed up with homemade biscuits and gravy for his friends anyway. They didn't get any. They were closed of course. Rocked his world, I tell you.) 

Home Hardware is more than just a hardware store. It's more like a department store that's a bit rough around the edges. From the porch rockers and chain saw carvings to the rotating bins of nails, screws, fasteners, and the sort, to the Red Rider wagons parked right beside about 20 crocks in various sizes in the front window festooned with Hokie flags and UT flags and Kentucky somewhere flags, it's a little something for everyone. I myself like to sniff the candles and check out the heft of the cast iron skillet collection. I also enjoy staring up at the tin ceiling. 

But the real draw for me was the Woodbooger tee shirt collection. Piles and piles of tee shirts. Long sleeves. Short sleeves. Colors galore. Hoodies even! Squatch Watch shirts for everyone! One of the men working there struck up a conversation with me as I fondled the shirts. He told me how the Bigfoot people had come to town a couple of years back searching for, um, Bigfoot. The Woodbooger, he's called around these parts. They combed High Knob looking for the Woodbooger but never did find him. They even tried to lure him out of the woods with doughnuts. I think he said they had sprinkles.  (If only they'd had Cab's doughnuts. They'd have found him for sure.)

He also told me that they'd ordered about 60 shirts initially, figuring they might sell them and make a little money. They sold out quickly, so Home Hardware ordered more. They even opened on a Saturday to sell them! Since that initial rush, they've topped 3,000 and they're still selling. (This was a year ago. I bet they're way over that amount now.) We bought one for each of us and a couple for our friends who loaned us their truck for the weekend. Currently, I'm thinking Christmas presents for everyone on my list!

And now I have to confess that I'm almost a believer. Well, a believer in the Woodbooger. Bigfoot? Never. But this Woodbooger? Well, the proof is right on Home Hardware's Facebook page. Wouldn't you believe? 

Sparkly Providence

Behold, the boiler.

She's a beauty, huh? All curvy and strong and complex with just the right amount of coppery shine tossed in. She sparkles. She actually sparkles! 

We cranked her up last weekend when the outside temps dipped into the 40s and I felt in my very bones the single degree drop from 67 to 66. With a couple of button pushes on the thermostat, clink, she was ON.

You just wouldn't believe the racket we heard one floor up.  
Bam! went one radiator
Hissss! went another
POP! 
POP POP POP!!! 
Clang! Bang!  Radiators all over the house are waking up from a summer hibernation.
Thunk! 
POP!!! POP!!! POP!!!  HISSSSSSS! All radiators fully operational

And then, WOOOOOOOOSH!

That one concerned us, so Curt ventured to the basement while I cheered him on from the safety of the couch. When he emerged, soot-less and fancy-free, it was to announce that the boiler had successfully filled itself with water. 

This might seem like a no-brainer, but in our experience, steam heat boilers don't necessarily do this on their own. Take last winter when we had to stomp down to the basement, rotate the water-fill valve on the old boiler (who was definitely not shiny), and wait till the clear beaker-looking pipe filled to the black Sharpie line with heat-producing water. Only then would the old boiler clunk on and fire up. 

We did this every six hours. 
All North Polar Vortex winter long. 
If you missed the 6-hour refill mark, you were cut off. 

This reminds me of the time Mom and Dad came to visit us back in the early '90s up on King George Avenue. Curt was at work on this freezing weekday morning, perhaps a snow day since I was at home. It felt chilly in our old house when I woke up. I wrapped my robe around me and went searching for Mom and Dad. They weren't upstairs in the guest room or bathroom. Not downstairs in the kitchen or living room. Certainly not outside. They were missing. I finally found them in the basement huddled by the furnace trying to get warm. Turns out, the thermostat was set to cool down during the day and heat up in the evenings when we were home, and I could not figure out how to reset it to make the furnace turn back on. We had to call Curt at work to come rescue us. Dad declared every house we ever lived in after that was too cold.  

And there's the other spot of glory in this boiler, besides its self-filling water feature. This is a surprise birthday gift to my family from my mom. 

Impossible, you say? She did pass away a year ago last Friday. Last year for my 45th birthday, she gave me an unconscious reflexive grin from the cardiac ICU, four days before she would be reunited with Dad and Michelle and in the presence of Jesus.  But this year there was no promise of a card or phone call or surprise package. Until the day a letter came from MetLife to me, her beneficiary, seeking to close her account. After sending the appropriate forms and a copy of the death certificate, we got a check for 10 times what we figured. Enough for a new steam heat boiler. Enough to keep us from huddling by the old one in the basement on cold winter days. Or even fuming down the steps to refill it every six hours. Enough to keep us warm for decades to come. How providential. 

Thanks, Mom. 

22 years ago I was a 23-year-old PMSing dreamer marrying my OneAndOnly. It was, except for the drippy hotness of a typical late summer afternoon, a perfect day for a wedding.(My only regret is that I didn't bring Ellie Dog - the perfect black lab mutt - to the celebration.)

Daddy was there, guiding me by the arm. "Do you know Curt is wearing, um, cowboy boots? You can back out now if you want to." 

Mom was there. "I'm so sorry. I thought I knew where the cake topper was!" The cake topper she used in her wedding was missing. We split-second subbed some daisies in its place.  

Michelle was there. All happy and in her element with her then-Secret Service Agent boyfriend. Oh yeah, we had security detail at our wedding. 

Both grandmothers were there. Simply beautiful in their experience and love.

Today we are 45 years old. 

And we are still married.

That's 22 years, for those who are counting. 

We have made it this far, thanks to God's patient guidance and blessing.

By today's standards, we've made it. 

By my standards, we're only part-way there.

We have a lifetime left. I can't wait to get started.  

Neon-y Memories

 We've been home a bit more than a year, long enough to feel like we've been here forever. In a way we have, except for that decade between 2003 and 2013. 

Forever is more of a feeling, anyway, than an actual stretch of time. 

It's that star, that very same "world's largest freestanding illuminated man-made star", that lit up the night when I first moved here in 1990, fresh out of Clinch Valley College with nothing more than a diploma, a rust-colored Toyota Tercel named Barney, and big, big hair. That star watched me start my first job in the city, a $14,500/year receptionist at CorEast Savings Bank in downtown. Downtown!!! 

It's driving by where Sonic used to be and seeing myself parked there with Mom, ordering large Diet Cokes while David Gray pumped through my speakers. Mom didn't particularly care for David Gray, but she did love a good Diet Coke.
  
It's picking up where you left off with the same friends you started teaching with in the trailer at Fallon Park. That trailer is still there, and it still smells the same. I'm told there are still Peppermint Patties in the fridge. 

It's driving through Old Southwest's Highland Park, where we got married, where we served hotdogs to our guests on a humid Labor Day weekend. And then, driving out of the park, on the dead-end of Walnut Avenue, it's seeing our first home, a 5-apartment 1926 home we rehabbed to its single-family days. We brought baby Camden and Baby Benjy home from the hospital to this house. I can still see Mom and Dad and my little sister Michelle swinging on the porch, rocking my babies. 

It's eating dinner at Curt's mom and dad's house, right next door to the 1906 house we are rehabbing now. Sitting at the dinner table piled high with honey ham and sweet potato soufflé, we listen to the same stories of Curt's childhood I've heard before, this time punctuated by the laughter of no-longer-babies Camden and Benjy. 

It seems so much of being back home has been simply remembering. That decade away did nothing to dim my recollections and everything to make me appreciate them. I can see how that man-made star illuminates my past in neon-y Kodachrome colors and Instagram filters and gives meaning and weight to the memories my family and I create today. 

Iris Love

For the life of me, I can't remember where I was when I fell in love with irises. 

Could've been Jean and Grover's house down the corner from mine. Jean used one of those old timey washing machines with the wringer instead of a spinner. You could see it on her back patio, and it seemed a little medieval even in the '70s. But there might've been some irises growing nearby. 

Or maybe it was at Mrs. Hart's house down the hill where we'd all four of us girlfriends beg for some sweetener to go with the grapes (her grapes) we'd just squeezed into a couple of Dixie cups.

It might even have been at my very home on Poplar Street, but I swear, I just can't see the place. 

I can only smell it.  And feel the sweet slightly dewy blossoms between my fingers.

It's that smell that takes me back to pig-tailed days running between our friends Kim and Karen's and the woods and, well, Mrs. Hart's. Somewhere in that mix are purple irises tall and fragrant and buzzing with bees. Not scary bees, but the big fat happy ones that seem too heavy to bother with us. The blossoms are springtime fresh and so big-scented. You can't run by them without getting a noseful of their fragrance. You can't jump rope without sniffing them out before you run through school to 12th grade. You can't even decide who goes first on the swing without taking in a big whiff of sweet iris.

Mom grew some some flowers, but they were mostly the kind you bought at the local nursery and put up in pots or window boxes. Impatiens, petunias, geraniums. The only thing I remember coming back year-round was the little cactus with yellow blooms that Dad saved from the trash somewhere in Coeburn. The irises of my childhood are hidden from me, but not that smell.

When I saw these irises blooming in front of the house this week, I grabbed my kitchen shears and marched down the steps to cut a few stems. Only a few though. I have to ensure that there are plenty of blooms left to fill the air with their sweet scent. And then I can sit on my front porch and remember the days when hidden irises were the star of my spring play. 

There is a time to live...

There’s a time to live

And a time to die

There’s a time to laugh

And a time to cry

There’s a time for war

And a time for peace

There’s a hand to hold

In the worst of these

Mom's been gone for more than six months now. And still, all it takes is a snippet of a song, a flash of highway, a chance view of her name on my Favorites list to send me careening back to Nashville to the Cardiac ICU and her bedside.

There’s a time for yes

And a time for no

There’s a time to be angry

And a time to let it go

There is a time to run

And a time to face it

There is love to see you

Through all of this

This morning is was Mandisa on the local Spirit FM. 

He is with you in the ICU

When the doctors don’t know what to do

And it scares you to the core

He is with you

This song was hot back in October. I heard it every day on Fish FM, the Nashville Christian radio station. I'd bet that each day, as I anxiously followed my GPS to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and tiredly drove back to the hotel at night, I heard it. I heard it so often that I'd begun to think it was written for me. 

We may weep for a time

But joy will come in the morning

The morning light

And this morning, a happen-stance hearing on my 10 minute drive to school, tears threatened to spill. If I'd had a good half hour to cry, I might have let them. 

When nothing else is left

And you take your final breath

He is with you

I pulled into the school lot, parked my car - the one Mom had given me a couple of years ago, and said a quick arrow prayer. Father God, thank you. Thank you that Mom is with you. Thank you that you are with me. Amen.

Alone with the Kryptonite

Curt took the boys to see The Hobbit today. That left me at home with the dogs for about 3 and a half hours. I've decided that's too long for me to be alone. Even with the dogs. 

I'd been doing so well this Christmas, you know? So joy-filled and full of grace and all Pollyanna positive. The spirit of Christmas and all that.

And then left to my own quiet as the evening sun poured through the living room window, my fragile peace shattered and I was alone with Mom again. Back in her ICU room in another time zone where I had begged God for a miracle. 

She died anyway. 

Oh yes, I am thankful that if Mom can't be here with me, she's there with Him. But still. 

But still.

I just miss her. And left to my own, that hole in my heart that I'd plugged with God-sent strength leaked a little and dried-up tears slid down my cheeks.

These days are inevitable, I suppose. There were times when I thought I was grieving all wrong with my sunshiny self spouting thankfulness and God praise. For some time I couldn't cry. Was this really what it felt like to lose your mom?

No, only a part of it.

Today I felt human-weak again. Perhaps tomorrow I'll pull from God's strength. But for today, I'm just oddly content to cover myself with his blanket of comfort. 

An Orphan's Hope

It didn't take me long to figure out that I was an orphan. I had just buried Mom in Powell Valley and returned to Roanoke with my own family. We brought back the Death Box that Dad had told Curt about years ago, and we found Mom's will squeezed between the files. In it, I was the only one left, short of Curt and the boys. 

I, little Orphan Wendi. 

I could have stopped, I suppose. Just stopped living and cried forever. I wanted to. But life has a way of carrying you along. I was still a wife. I was still a mom. I was still a teacher. I was still alive. No, stopping wasn't an option. And it wasn't anything I seriously entertained.

Because deep down, I didn't feel the hopelessness that comes with despair. Instead, I felt a surge of joy. Not at Mom's death, but at her home-going. I knew that she was in a place I could not even imagine. She was with Jesus. 

As Mom slipped from this life in the Vanderbilt cardiac ICU, I grieved even as I gave her my blessing to go. At that time,  I didn't see her leaving me so much as I saw her going home, going to Him. Her Savior was waiting. And with Him were her dad and mom, and my sister and father, and every other loved one who also loved God's son. It was powerful. And it was comforting. 

And it has been sustaining. 

I can't begin to tell you how it works, just that it does. This faith in God, in his Son, and in his plan has carried me since I first said yes to Jesus back at the First Baptist Church in Norton. It was easy to believe at first. Untested, I could know all the answers in my head and not really worry about my heart.

But when my sister died suddenly in 2008, I found my faith tested. What if Michelle was gone, really gone, forever?  There could be nothing as dark as thinking she was apart from anything good for all eternity. And even if God and faith weren't in the mix, there was certainly no hope in knowing that a life lived out on earth was suddenly gone. Where's the purpose, the calling, in that? 

That's when God sent Betty Jean to remind me that Michelle was with Jesus. She was safe forever because she had once professed her faith in him, back at that same church where we grew up all pig-tailed and blue-eyed and dolled-up. In the years since,  Michelle had not lived a perfect life. She had made some mistakes and not lived up to perfection. But she didn't have to. And we don't either. Jesus is perfect enough to save her and the rest of us.

And so Shell's with Mom now. Mom, who also was not perfect. Dad, again, not perfect. And one day, me, my husband, and my own sons. We are definitely not perfect. But Jesus is. And He has done the work to save us all. If we just believe. 

Choosing to believe in this greatest of all gifts brings hope to this orphan's Christmas. I pray you find it, too.