Hey there. Hugh here. While Karen has been on the road, I have been supposed to blog some here, but as you can tell, I have not.
What passes for a snowstorm in Raleigh, NC (about 5-6 inches) hit last weekend, bringing my fair city to her metaphorical knees and leaving my friends who live outside in a very real lurch. I have been swamped trying to make sure everyone was warm, safe and OK.
Anyway, here is a short narrative I wrote a while back about one of my “typical” days – in which a homeless man shares with me a great theological insight.
Note: The way we talk, the choice of words we use, all of that is part of our story and part of who we are. Life on the streets is not pretty and it is not polite. Many in my position clean up the language when reporting what is said; I have chosen to leave it. I will not dishonor the people I speak to by imposing my grammar on them.
I was sitting in church this morning when I got a vision of this photo. I’d seen the news story this past week following the rescue of Kiki, the 7-year-old Haitian boy, who along with his sister was trapped for 8 days.
Once the rescue team finally cut through enough fallen stone to save the boy, Kiki refused to be pulled from the rubble. He did not want to leave his sister’s side, even if staying meant dying. It wasn’t until an aunt urged him to come out did Kiki allow himself to be pulled from beneath the tomb of concrete. Yet, once free, the boy joyously reached for the heavens.
The reason I was thinking about this in church this morning actually had nothing to do with Haiti or the tragedy there.
Rather it was because I was at Antioch Church in Bend, Oregon. I attend this church with my daughters whenever I’m in the area. Ken Wytsma is the lead pastor at Antioch. You’ll read more about Pastor Ken in Doublewide.
The Haitians have compelled me to ponder the critical role that our worship leaders & musicians play in our lives. Several years ago I interviewed a man whose wife, daughter and mother were killed in a car wreck. “I lost my past, my present, and my future,” he said.
Asked how a person goes about grieving so many people at once, he said that many times during that first year, when prayers eluded him, he retreated to his office and put on music.
As she dealt with breast cancer, my girlfriend Connie would often draw strength from praise and worship songs. Connie particularly enjoyed a hymn CD I had picked at Cracker Barrel featuring Amy Grant singing Anywhere with Jesus:
Anywhere with Jesus I can safely go
Anywhere he leads me in this world below
Answhere without Him dearest joys would fade
Anywhere with Jesus I am not afraid
Journalists covering the unfolding tragedy in Haiti have repeatedly noted that, despite the darkness, the Haitian people gather together singing and praying.
(Karin Wilson, owner of Page&Palette Bookstore in Fairhope, Ala., asked me to write the following essay for her newsletter on The Why of Writing.)
The car was black and shiny like my Sunday shoes, and it looked like somebody had used the hopscotch chalk to draw white circles on the tires. A bright June sun made the inside door handle hot to touch. Sweat pasted my legs to the backseat.
I was sitting behind Daddy who was driving toward Knoxville on 11-W, known to my kin as the “Bloody Highway.” They’d talk about that road in hushed tones, as if it was a living thing eavesdropping. A demon snake capable of swallowing church buses whole, snatching good Christian people away before they got a chance to be raptured. One bad year 35 people were killed as they rounded the slick bends of that blacktop.
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Ann Kiemel, Authors, Jeff Foxworthy, Jesus, new books, Page & Palette, Paul Young, Spanx, The Shack, Will Jesus Buy Me a Doublewide, writing
Some people plod methodically through life. They have a routine and they stick to it. They eat oatmeal for breakfast everyday because it’s healthy. Friday is pizza night. Saturday is for yard work. Sunday they go to church. There’s calmness to such an orderly life.
Unless they happen to be related to someone like me.
I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-kinda-gal whose life is full of adventures, few of which are rarely planned in advance. The only routine I stick to is getting up every day and I anticipate that life’s biggest adventure will begin on the day I fail to do that.
My friends often tell me, “You’re not capable of living a normal life.” What they really mean is that my life is high-drama.
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