I was asked by a very sweet friend where I thought my writing talent came from. Gently I replied that I wasn't sure if I had any writing talent, but just a meandering mind.
Keeping pace with humbleness and weariness of understanding what my talent is she told me I had the writing gene. I replied simply, "I think it's the writing virus."
Some musicians talk about when they perform on stage how at some point the audience disappears and the music takes over. It might explain why when I hear Pavarotti sing and watch him perform that it seems he had a distance glare. The music must have taken over and transformed him to another place.
At the computer or with pen in hand a writer can feel the weight of writing well and the fear of producing less than perfect work. Writing well is time intensive and requires practice. The continuous rehearsing of words is not unlike a musician continually rehearsing a note.
But in time writing becomes easier and the writer is able to sit down and plunge head first into the well-spring of creativity to emote pages of beautiful prose. And, like a musician, engrossed in the depths of musical euphoria, the writer, too, can experience the joy of writing, disappearing among the pages of characters and scenes while producing stories instead of songs.
© 2011 ML Michaels
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Coupon d'etat
photo © 2010 sdc2027 | more info (via: Wylio)Recently I have become some what obsessed with a new show on TLC, Extreme Couponing. Although I am more of a spectator than a participant in this financial sport, I see this form of couponing less as extreme living and more as a form of home economics. While I agree that some people do not need 50 bags of croutons or 100 bottles of shampoo, the idea that I could provide for my family while saving a ton of money intrigues me.
Originally I heard about this form of couponing from my favorite financial advisor, Clark Howard, who provides financial advice to listeners over the radio and on CNN's Headline News on Saturdays.
With coupons, a family can find significant reductions in their monthly grocery bill while transferring those savings to other debts or to other saving accounts.
Although I would not collect more things than would be necessary for my family, I certainly would use this form of extreme couponing to purchase items for my family so that I could save for other necessities.
And, an interesting note about the couponers, several of the participants on the show say that they donate many of the items they have received for free to local food banks. I think food banks could use this idea of extreme couponing to fill their shelves while relying on donations. I believe an entire ministry could be formed out of extreme couponing, which could provide for the needy.
One of the coupon sites I go to includes Coupon Mom. Along with the inserts from my newspaper, visits to my local grocery store front desk for extra coupons, and the stores frequent buyer program I have made a good start.
If there are other places that you go to please share so that we can share in the savings!
Happy Couponing!
© 2011 ML Michaels
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Box of Screws
photo © 2011 Dave McLear | more info (via: Wylio)Rumaging through a box of screws in my kitchen trying to find just one to use to hang pictures in my bedroom, I saw many useful pieces. In the menagiere of bolts and nuts, screws and fastiners that lined the bottom of the tin can, I realized something about life. When we start out in life we are shiny and new with great potential.
We are like those bolts and screws because we get used for the purpose that we were made for.
But, over time things change and tastes change with the times. Curtains come down, pictures are replaced and furniture is rearranged. With that comes new bolts, fastiners, and screws to take the place of the old ones. And the old ones are put into drawers instead of thrown away because the owner still believes there is a use for them.
The used nuts and bolts with their great knowledge of how to hold things up and hold things together sit wondering how all the great purpose and potential they had is now wasting away.
Many people today wonder how God could allow them to waste away in jobs that are below their skill level or be under-utilized in a job that is far below their years of education and/or experience. People can become angry at the thought. There isn't an answer that ever satisifies the broken or angry heart of someone who feels their God given potential is wasting away.
But clearly God has a plan.
"Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!" --Isaiah 30:18 NIV
While we wait on the Lord for His plan for our lives, we wait also to see His blessings.
© 2011 ML Michaels
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Still Waters Run Deep
photo © 2006 John Parkinson | more info (via: Wylio)"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Genesis 1: 1-2 NIV
From this verse we already have discovered that God is creative. Creativity is the epitome of what it means to be a follower of God.
Now that we have permission to be creative, what do we do with our freedom?
Using creative freedom to unleash our writing allows the Christian writer to discover new avenues to writing about God.
Walking down the same paths as other writers will give you guidance and awareness of how to write, but it will not allow you to discover your own voice as a writer.
Discovering new ways of writing about God usually requires time walking and writing with God.
Still waters run deep, so should a Christian writer.
© 2011 ML Michaels
Monday, May 9, 2011
Let's Do Lunch by Roger Troy Wilson
Let's Do Lunch by Roger Troy Wilson is another success story about someone else who lost weight by eating fruits and vegetables. Truthfully I was hoping for the all you can eat tortilla chip and guacamole diet that magically reduced my waist line. But to no avail!
Although the book is a dear story about how an overweight man found a way to eat more of the right things and less of the wrong things, I was unimpressed by the overall diet. Who doesn't know these tricks and techniques about food substitutions and eating fruits and vegetables.
I can promise you that if I liked eating 25 lbs of grapes a day with fresh fish and vegetables, I don't think anyone would need to write a book about weight loss.
But the book has wonderful insights into dieting and weight loss with a simple recipe guide in the back of the book, and a 14 day-meal guide.
3 out of 5 stars
Thomas Nelson Publishers provided this book for free as a part of BookSneeze.com book review blogger program.
© 2011 ML Michaels
Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore
Same Kind of Different As Me follows the lives of two unlikely people whose lives cross because of the work of one woman.
Denver Moore, an ex sharecropper and convicted felon and Ron Hall, a rich, high-life art dealer meet under the most unlikely circumstances to form a bond and life-long friendship.
Each has a distinct background from two sides of life, but meet in the middle because of Ron's wife Deborah whose life is emmersed in work for the Lord.
With wit and humor and a heart-breaking ending Same Kind of Different As Me will encourage the reader to see past the outside of others and discover that the inside of people is all that matters to the Lord.
This is a wonderful book!
5 out of 5 stars
Thomas Nelson Publishers provided this book for free as a part of BookSneeze.com book review blogger program.
© 2011 ML Michaels
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Each Life is Unique by Lucinda Secrest McDowell
AND ... do enter the contest for a chance to win a beautiful hand crafted pearl necklace. To enter, just {CLICK THIS LINK} and fill out the short form. Contest runs 5/1-5/8 and the winner will on 5/11. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.
If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit http://www.pearlgirls.info/ and see what we're all about. In short, we exist to support the work of charities that help women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls™ products (all GREAT Mother's Day gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.
And to all you MOMS out there! Happy Mother's Day!
“God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. II Peter 1.3 (NIV)
Moms, God wants you to know that He has given you everything you need for life --- your unique life. He does not plan to give you what you might need to live the life of your best friend, or your neighbor, or even your favorite mother-model. No, God has called you to the life that He planned. I suspect that for most of us, it didn’t turn out to be the life we thought it might be… so long ago when we were young and dreaming of ‘growing up.’
On Mother’s Day I often recall my own dreams to one day be a mother. I grew up playing with dolls and looking to my own Mama as a model for that particular role in life. However, by the time I reached my thirties I was still not a mother! God did, however, have a plan. It just wasn’t what I imagined.
My own unique life would find me becoming a mother through the adoption of my first three children who were ages 9, 7 and 4; and then much later giving birth to our fourth child. Of course I was shocked when God revealed this to me, but I was ecstatic as well. It’s as though I could hear Him saying, “Well, you’re not getting any younger so I’m just going to just give you a jump start with three at one time!”
A huge blessing! A huge adjustment! A joy and a struggle. Change is often like that, isn’t it? We finally get what we want then we have to deal with it. May I just offer a bit of advice if you just got a great answer to prayer, but perhaps not in the way or form you imagined? Just receive it. Embrace it. And be willing to move forward into a new paradigm for your life. So what if you’re not like all the other mothers you know? So what if you’re not like your own mother? So what if your family unit is different? I guarantee God has a plan.
Not only did he want me to embrace my own story, but He called me as a mother to do perhaps one of the most important tasks of all --- to nurture my children to live their own unique lives. Not for me to try and squeeze them into what I hoped and dreamed they would be. Not for me to try and live my life through them. But to recognize how God made them, gifted them, and called them to their own special place.
All of my 4 kids are different from one another. Let’s take sports, for instance: I have one child who wins gold medals in international tennis competition, one who is a born equestrian, another who competes nationally in obstacle course shooting matches, and yet another who manages to dance onstage in 3 inch heels, do cartwheels and splits while singing at the same time. Now, honestly, I do none of these things. And yet they do.
I don’t remember placing my order with God for these things. But I do remember when that tennis player turned 9 years old and I enrolled him in Special Olympics for the first time and how it changed his life… and ours. I remember getting a counselor job at an exclusive summer camp so that my daughter could take English riding classes. I remember being a Cub Scout leader (even though I knew nothing about boys) so that son could one day become an Eagle scout and pursue his love of the great outdoors. And yes, I remember enrolling my preschooler in dance lessons. Later when all the little girls were scared to go on stage for the recital, she exclaimed that she had endured a whole year of lessons just so she could go on stage.
Don’t compare yourself to someone else. And don’t live vicariously through your favorite reality show star. Live your own story. And Moms, raise your kids to embrace the unique life God has for them.
Remember, He has given us everything we need for life!
Lucinda Secrest McDowell, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, is the author of 10 books including “Role of a Lifetime,” “Amazed by Grace,” “Spa for the Soul” and the new Bible Study “Fit and Healthy Summer.” She is an international conference speaker and enjoys being a Pearl Girl from “Sunnyside” – her home in a New England village. Visit Cindy at http://www.encouragingwords.net%20/
Saturday, May 7, 2011
What is a Grandmother? by Suzanne Woods Fisher
AND ... do enter the contest for a chance to win a beautiful hand crafted pearl necklace. To enter, just {CLICK THIS LINK} and fill out the short form. Contest runs 5/1-5/8 and the winner will on 5/11. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.
If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit http://www.pearlgirls.info/ and see what we're all about. In short, we exist to support the work of charities that help women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls™ products (all GREAT Mother's Day gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.
And to all you MOMS out there! Happy Mother's Day!
What is a Grandmother? by Suzanne Woods Fisher
“A grandmother is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit best friend.”
Amish proverb
I arrived late in the night in Rhode Island, anxious to meet my two-day-old grandson, Blake, after a full day of flying. My daughter and son-in-law had just returned home from the hospital and felt like they had been in a train wreck. There was stuff everywhere. Already, the needs of this little eight-pound bundle of joy were enormous: an all-terrain stroller, plenty of diapers, onesies, spit-up rags, an assortment of pacifiers to try out until he found the ideal one.
And he was perfect.
I know, I know. “Every mother crow thinks her own little crow is the blackest.” But this little dark eyed, dark haired boy really was perfect.
I spent the next seven days (and nights) getting to know this little guy. His schedule (he had none), his hunger cries (very similar to his every other cry). His pirate look--one eye open, one eye squeezed shut, as if he was still surprised by all that had taken place to him in a week’s time.
I felt surprised, too. How could my baby possibly have had a baby? How could I be a grandmother? I had just turned fifty-one. Shockingly young! How could a kid like me give up playing tennis three times a week to settle into knitting and crocheting and Friday night bingo? And shouldn’t I alter my appearance to fit this new label? Give up my jeans? Switch over to below knee-length calico dresses, thick black socks, practical shoes, gray hair pinned in a topknot. Think…Aunt Bee on Mayberry R.F.D.
As soon as people knew my daughter was expecting, I was bombarded with advice from my well meaning friends—even those who weren’t yet grandparents. “The best way to avoid getting on the nerves of your daughter and son-in-law is to not say anything. Ever.” Or “You’d better pick your nickname or you’ll be stuck with something hideous, like MooMoo Cow.”
What should I be called? Granny? No…reminded me of The Beverly Hillbillies. Grandma? No…sounded like The Waltons. Grammy? No…it was already taken by the in-laws.
But no one really explained what it meant to be a grandmother. I didn’t know myself, not until I held baby Blake in my arms. In that moment, I realized that he was one of mine. He belongs to me. He will be on my mind and in my prayers, every day, for the rest of my life. There’s a bond between us that can’t be broken. He has altered my life forevermore.
I had become a grandmother.
Suzanne Woods Fisher is the bestselling author of The Choice, The Waiting, and The Search, as well as nonfiction books about the Amish, including Amish Peace. Her interest in the Anabaptist cultures can be directly traced to her grandfather, W. D. Benedict, who was raised in the Old Order German Baptist Brethren Church in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Benedict eventually became publisher of Christianity Today magazine. Suzanne is the host of a radio show called Amish Wisdom and her work has appeared in many magazines. She lives in California. http://www.suzannewoodsfisher.com%20/
Friday, May 6, 2011
Wild Card Tour- Livvie's Song by Sharlene MacLaren
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
Livvie’s Song
(River of Hope series #1)
Whitaker House (July 5, 2011)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
“Shar” grew up in western Michigan and graduated from Spring Arbor University with a degree in education. She traveled the world with a musical group before returning home to marry Cecil MacLaren whom she’d known since childhood. Together they raised two daughters (and now have three grandchildren). As retirement approached, Shar asked God for a new mission that would fill her heart with the same kind of passion she’d felt for teaching and raising her family. She found her mission in Christian fiction writing, crafting plotlines that bring her characters face-to-face with God’s grace and restorative power. Since 2007 she’s released nine successful books – two historical series and three stand-alone contemporary novels – that have earned her numerous awards and an ever-increasing base of loyal readers who are comforted, inspired, and entertained by her books.Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Life is far from a breeze for Olivia Beckman, owner of Livvie’s Kitchen, a favorite of locals in Wabash, Indiana. It’s the 1920’s and the widowed mother of two is struggling to make ends meet—no simple feat when her cook turns in his resignation. A late night patron soon solves the problem, though. Looking for work and carrying his only earthly possessions -- a harmonica and a Bible -- Will Taylor is an experienced cook eager for work. What Will doesn’t share is that his experience comes from ten years working behind bars in the prison cafeteria. He manages to bake his way into the stomachs of his customers—and into Livvie’s heart as well. Both Livvie and Will are hesitant, though, bearing deep wounds from the past. A recipe for love between them will require sharing secrets, braving dangers, and believing God for a bright future.Product Details:
List Price: $9.99
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Whitaker House (July 5, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1603742123
ISBN-13: 978-1603742122
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
May 1926
Wabash, Indiana
“Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song.”
—Psalm 149:1
Smoke rings rose and circled the heads of Charley Arnold and Roy Scott as they sat in Livvie’s Kitchen and partook of steaming coffee, savory roast beef and gravy, and conversation, guffawing every so often at each other’s blather. Neither seemed to care much who heard them, since the whole place buzzed with boisterous midday talk. Folks came to her restaurant to fill their stomachs, Livvie Beckman knew, but, for many, getting an earful of gossip was just as satisfying.
Behind the counter in the kitchen, utensils banged against metal and pots and pans sizzled and boiled with steam and smoke. “Order’s up!” hollered the cook, Joe Stewart. On cue, Livvie carried the two hamburger platters to Pete and Susie Jones’s table and set them down with a hasty smile. Her knee-length, floral cotton skirt flared as she turned, mopping her brow and blowing several strawberry blonde strands of damp hair off her face, and hustled to the counter. “You boys put out those disgusting nicotine sticks,” she scolded Charley and Roy on the run. “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t allow smoking in this establishment? We don’t even have ashtrays.”
“Aw, Livvie, how you expect us t’ enjoy a proper cup o’ coffee without a cigarette?” Charley whined to her back. “’Sides, ar’ saucers work fine for ashtrays.”
“Saucers are not ashtrays,” stated old Evelyn Garner from the booth behind the two men. She craned her long, skinny neck and trained her owl eyes on them, her lips pinched together in a tight frown. Her husband, Ira Garner, had nothing to say, of course. He rarely did, preferring to let his wife do the talking. Instead, he slurped wordlessly on his tomato soup.
Livvie snatched up the next order slip from the counter and gave it a glance. Then, she lifted two more plates, one of macaroni and cheese, the other of a chicken drumstick and mashed potatoes, and whirled back around, eyeing both men sternly. “I expect you to follow my rules, boys”—she marched past them—“or go next door to Isaac’s, where the smoke’s as thick as cow dung.”
Her saucy remark gave rise to riotous hoots. “You tell ’em, Liv,” someone said—Harv Brewster, perhaps? With the racket of babies crying, patrons chattering, the cash register clinking as Cora Mae Livingston tallied somebody’s order, the screen door flapping open and shut, and car horns honking outside, Livvie couldn’t discern who said what. Oh, how she wished she had the funds to hire a few more waitresses. Some days, business didn’t call for it, but, today, it screamed, “Help!”
“You best listen, fellas. When Livvie Beckman speaks, she means every word,” said another. She turned at the husky male voice but couldn’t identify its source.
“Lady, you oughtta go to preachin’ school,” said yet another unknown speaker.
“She’s somethin’, ain’t she?” There was no mistaking Coot Hermanson’s croaky pipes. Her most loyal customer, also the oldest by far, gave her one of his famous, toothy grins over his coffee cup, which he held with trembling hands. No one really knew Coot’s age, and most people suspected he didn’t know it, himself, but Livvie thought he looked to be a hundred; ninety-nine, at the very least. But that didn’t keep him from showing up at her diner on Market Street every day, huffing from the two-block walk, his faithful black mongrel, Reggie, parked on his haunches under the red and white awning out front, waiting for his usual handout of leftover bacon or the heels of a fresh-baked loaf of bread.
Before scooting past him, she stooped to tap him with her elbow. “I’ll be right back to fill that coffee cup, Coot,” she whispered into his good ear.
He lifted an ancient white eyebrow and winked. “You take your time, missy,” he wheezed back before she straightened and hurried along.
Of all her regulars, Coot probably knew her best—knew about the tough façade she put on, day in and day out; recognized the rawness of her heart, the ache she still carried from the loss of her beloved Frank. More than a year had come and gone since her husband’s passing, but it still hurt to the heavens to think about him. More painful still were her desperate attempts to keep his memory alive for her sons, Alex and Nathan. She’d often rehash how she’d met their father at a church picnic when the two were only teenagers; how he’d enjoyed fishing, hunting, and building things with his bare hands; and how, as he’d gotten older, his love of the culinary arts had planted within him a seed of desire to one day open his own restaurant. She’d tell them how they’d worked so hard to scrimp and save, even while raising a family, and how thrilled Frank had been when that dream had finally come to fruition.
What she didn’t tell her boys was how much she struggled to keep her passion for the restaurant alive in their daddy’s absence. Oh, she had Joe, of course, but he’d dropped the news last week that he’d picked up a new kitchen job in a Chicago diner—some well-known establishment, he’d said—and he could hardly have turned it down, especially with his daughter and grandchildren begging him to move closer to them. Wabash had been home to Joe Stewart since childhood, but his wife had died some five years ago, and he had little to keep him here. It made sense, Livvie supposed, but it didn’t make her life any easier having to find a replacement.
She set down two plates for a couple she’d never seen before, a middle-aged man and his wife. Strangers were always passing through Wabash on their ways north or south, so it wasn’t unusual for her not to know them. “You folks enjoy your lunch,” she said with a smile.
“Thank you kindly,” the man said, licking his lips and loosening his tie. “This meal looks mighty fine.”
Livvie nodded, then made for the coffeepot behind the counter, sensing it was time for a round of refills.
A cloud of smoke still surrounded Charley and Roy’s table, though their cigarettes looked to be nearing their ends. She decided not to mention anything further about their annoying behavior unless they lit up again. Those fools had little compunction and even less consideration for the feelings of others. She would have liked to ban them from her restaurant, if it weren’t for the revenue they brought in with their almost daily visits. Gracious, it cost an awful lot to keep a restaurant going. She would sell it tomorrow if she had a backup plan, but she didn’t. Besides, Frank would bust out of his casket if she hung a “For Sale” sign on the front door. The diner had been his dream, one she’d adopted with gusto because she’d loved him so much, but she hadn’t envisioned his leaving her in the thick of it before they’d paid off their mortgage on the three-story building and turned a good profit on the restaurant.
Oh, why had God taken Frank at such a young age? He’d been thirty-one, married for ten years and a restaurant owner for five. Couldn’t God have intervened and sent an angel just in time to keep Frank from stepping in front of that horse-drawn wagon hauling furniture? And why, for mercy’s sake, did the accident have to occur right in front of the restaurant, drawing a huge crowd and forever etching in her mind’s eye the sight of her beloved lying in the middle of the street, blood oozing from his nose and mouth, his eyes open but not really seeing? Coot often told her that God had her best interests in mind and that she needed to trust Him with her whole heart, but how could she, when it seemed like few things ever went right for her, and she had to work so hard to stay afloat? Goodness, she barely had a minute to spare for her own children.
Swallowing a sigh, she hefted up the coffeepot, which had finished percolating, and started the round of refills, beginning with Coot Hermanson.
***
Will Taylor ground out his last cigarette with the sole of his worn shoe as he leaned against the wall of the train car, his head pounding with every jolt, the whir and buzz of metal against metal ripping through his head. He stared down at his empty pack of Luckies and turned up his mouth in the corner, giving a little huff of self-disgust. He didn’t really smoke—not anymore. But, when he’d left Welfare Island State Penitentiary in New York City in the wee hours of the morning, one of the guards had handed him a fresh pack, along with the few belongings he had to his name, and he’d smoked the entire thing to help pass the time.
Sharing the mostly empty freight car with him were a dozen or so other men, the majority of whom wore unkempt beards, ragged clothing, and long faces. They also stank to the heavens. He figured he fit right in with the lot of them. Frankly, they all looked like a bunch of bums—and probably were, for that matter. Why else would they have jumped aboard the freight car at various stations while the yardmen had their backs turned instead of purchasing a ticket for a passenger car? Will had intended to pay his fare, and he’d even found himself standing in the queue outside the ticket booth, but when he’d counted his meager stash of cash, he’d fallen out of line. Thankfully, the dense morning fog had made his train-jumping maneuver a cinch. If only it could have had the same effect on his conscience. He’d just been released from prison. Couldn’t he get through his first day of freedom without breaking the law?
“Where you headed, mister?” the man closest to him asked.
He could count on one hand the number of minutes anybody on that dark, dingy car had spent engaged in conversation in the hours they’d been riding, and he didn’t much feel like talking now. Yet he turned to the fellow, anyway. “Wabash, Indiana,” he answered. “Heard it’s a nice place.”
Actually, he knew nothing about it, save for the state song, “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away,” which spoke about the river running through it. He’d determined his destination just that morning while poring over a map in the train station, thinking that any other place in the country would beat where he’d spent the last ten years. When he’d overheard someone mention Wabash, he’d found it on the map and, knowing it had its own song, set his mind on going there.
He didn’t know a soul in Wabash, which made the place all the more appealing. Best to make a fresh start anonymously. Of course, he had no idea what he’d do to make a living, and it might be that he’d have to move on to the next town if jobs there were scarce. But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
His stomach growled, so he opened his knapsack and took out an apple, just one of the few items he’d lifted from the jail kitchen the previous night—with the approval of Harry Wilkinson, the kitchen supervisor. The friends he’d made at Welfare Island were few, as he couldn’t trust most folks any farther than he could pitch them, but he did consider Harry a friend, having worked alongside him for the past four years. Harry had told him about the love of God and convinced him not six months ago to give his heart over to Him, saying he’d need a good friend when he left the island and could do no better than the Creator of the universe. Will had agreed, of course, but he sure was green in the faith department, even though he’d taken to reading the Bible Harry had given him—his first and only—almost every night before laying his head on his flat, frayed pillow.
“Wabash, eh?” the man said, breaking into his musings. “I heard of it. Ain’t that the first electrically lighted city in the world? I do believe that’s their claim to fame.”
“That right? I wouldn’t know.”
“What takes you to Wabash?” he persisted, pulling on his straggly beard.
Will pulled on his own thick beard, mostly brown with some flecks of blond, briefly wondering if he ought to shave it off before he went in search of a job. He’d seen his reflection in a mirror that morning for the first time in a week and had nearly fallen over. In fact, he’d had to do some mental calculations to convince himself that he was actually thirty-four years old, not forty-three. Prison had not been kind to his appearance; where he’d slaved under the hot summer sun, digging trenches and hoeing the prison garden, and spent the winters hauling coal and chopping logs. While the work had put him in excellent shape physically, the sun and wind had wreaked havoc on his skin, freckling his nose and arms and wrinkling his forehead. When he hadn’t been outside, he’d worked in a scorching-hot kitchen, stirring kettles of soup, peeling potatoes, cutting slabs of beef, filleting fish, and plucking chickens’ feathers.
“Wabash seemed as good a place as any,” he replied after some thought, determined to keep his answers short and vague.
The fellow peered at him with arched eyebrows. “Where you come from, anyway?”
“Around.”
A chuckle floated through the air but quickly drowned in the train’s blaring whistle. The man dug into his side pocket and brought out a cigar, stuck it in his mouth, and lit the end, then took a deep drag before blowing out a long stream of smoke. He gave a thoughtful nod and gazed off. “Yeah, I know. Me, too.” Across the dark space, the others shifted or slept, legs crossed at the ankles, heads bobbing, not seeming to care about the conversation, if they even heard it.
Will might have inquired after his traveling companion, but his years behind bars had taught him plenty—most important, not to trust his fellow man, and certainly never to divulge his personal history. And posing questions to others would only invite inquiries about himself.
He chomped down his final bite of apple, then tossed the chiseled core onto the floor, figuring a rodent would appreciate it later. Then, he wiped his hands on his pant legs, reached inside his hip pocket, and pulled out his trusty harmonica. Moistening his lips, he brought the instrument to his mouth and started breathing into it, cupping it like he might a beautiful woman’s face. Music had always soothed whatever ailed him, and, ever since he’d picked up the skill as a youngster under his grandfather’s tutelage, he’d often whiled away the hours playing this humble instrument.
He must have played half a dozen songs—“Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” “Over There,” “Amazing Grace,” “The Sidewalks of New York,” and even “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away”—before the shrill train whistle announced their arrival in Wabash. Another stowaway pulled the car door open a crack to peek out and establish their whereabouts.
Quickly, Will stuffed his mouth organ inside his pocket, then stretched his back, the taut muscles tingling from being stationary for so long. At least his pounding headache had relented, replaced now by a mess of tangled nerves. “Reserved excitement” is how he would have described his emotion.
“Nice playin’,” said a man whose face was hidden by the shadow of his low-lying hat. He tipped the brim at Will and gave a slow nod. “You’ve got a way with that thing. Almost put me in a lonesome-type mood.”
“Thanks. For the compliment, I mean. Sorry ’bout your gloomy mood. Didn’t mean to bring that on.”
“Ain’t nothin’. I been jumpin’ trains fer as long as I can remember. Gettin’ the lonelies every now and again is somethin’ to be ’spected, I s’pose.”
“That’s for sure,” mumbled another man, sitting in a corner with his legs stretched out. Will glanced at the sole of his boot and noticed his sock pushing through a gaping hole. Something like a rock turned over in his gut. These guys made a habit of hopping on trains, living off handouts, and roaming the countryside. Vagabonds, they were. He hoped never to see the inside of another freight car, and, by gum, he’d make sure he didn’t—with the Lord’s help, of course. He had enough money to last a couple of weeks, so long as he holed up someplace dirt-cheap and watched what he spent on food. He prayed he’d land a job—any job—in that time. He wouldn’t be choosy in the beginning; he couldn’t afford to be. If he had to haul garbage, well, so be it. He couldn’t expect to do much more than that, not with a criminal record. His hope was that no one would inquire. After all, who but somebody downright desperate would hire an ex-con? Not that he planned to volunteer that bit of information, but he supposed anybody could go digging if they really wanted to know.
He hadn’t changed his name, against Harry’s advice. “I’m not going to run for the rest of my life, Harry,” he’d argued. “Heck, I served my time. It’s not that I plan to broadcast it, mind you, but I’m not going to carry the weight of it forever, either. I wasn’t the only one involved in that stupid burglary.” Though he did shoulder most of the responsibility for committing it. The others had left him to do most of the dirty work, and they’d run off when the law had shown up.
Harry had nodded in silence, then reached up to lay a bony hand on Will’s hulking shoulder. Few people ever laid a hand on him and got away with it, so, naturally, he’d started to pull away, but Harry had held firm, forcing Will to loosen up. “You got a good point there, Will. You’re a good man, you know that?” He hadn’t known that, and he’d appreciated Harry’s vote of confidence. “You just got to go out there and be yourself. Folks will believe in you if you take the first step, start seeing your own self-worth. The Lord sees it, and you need to look at yourself through His eyes. Before you know it, your past will no longer matter—not to you or to anyone else.”
The train brakes screeched for all of a minute, with smoke rising up from the tracks and seeping in through the cracks of the dirty floor. Will choked back the burning residue and stood up, then gazed down at his strange companions, feeling a certain kinship he’d never expected. “You men be safe, now,” he said, passing his gaze over each one. Several of them acknowledged him with a nod, but most just gave him a vacant stare. The fellow at the back of the car who’d spent the entire day sleeping in the shadows finally lifted his face a notch and looked at him—vigilantly, Will thought. Yet he shook off any uneasiness.
The one who’d first struck up a conversation with him, short-lived as it had been, raised his bearded chin. The two made eye contact. “You watch yourself out there, fella. You got to move fast once your feet hit that dirt. Anybody sees you jumpin’ off is sure to report you, and if it’s one of the yardmen, well, you may as well kiss your hiney good-bye. They got weapons on them, and they don’t look kindly on us spongers.”
“Thanks. I’ll be on guard.” Little did the man know how adept he was at handling himself. The years he’d served in the state pen had taught him survival skills he hoped never to have to use in the outside world.
When the train finally stopped, he reached inside his shirt pocket and peeked at his watch, which was missing its chain. Ten minutes after seven. He pulled the sliding door open just enough to fit his bulky body through, then poked his head out and looked around. Finding the coast clear, thanks to a long freight train parked on neighboring tracks, he gave the fellows one last nod, then leaped from the car and slunk off into the gathering dusk, his sack of meager possessions slung over his shoulder.
First item on his short agenda: look for a restaurant where he could silence his grumbling stomach.
Wabash, Indiana
“Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song.”
—Psalm 149:1
Smoke rings rose and circled the heads of Charley Arnold and Roy Scott as they sat in Livvie’s Kitchen and partook of steaming coffee, savory roast beef and gravy, and conversation, guffawing every so often at each other’s blather. Neither seemed to care much who heard them, since the whole place buzzed with boisterous midday talk. Folks came to her restaurant to fill their stomachs, Livvie Beckman knew, but, for many, getting an earful of gossip was just as satisfying.
Behind the counter in the kitchen, utensils banged against metal and pots and pans sizzled and boiled with steam and smoke. “Order’s up!” hollered the cook, Joe Stewart. On cue, Livvie carried the two hamburger platters to Pete and Susie Jones’s table and set them down with a hasty smile. Her knee-length, floral cotton skirt flared as she turned, mopping her brow and blowing several strawberry blonde strands of damp hair off her face, and hustled to the counter. “You boys put out those disgusting nicotine sticks,” she scolded Charley and Roy on the run. “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t allow smoking in this establishment? We don’t even have ashtrays.”
“Aw, Livvie, how you expect us t’ enjoy a proper cup o’ coffee without a cigarette?” Charley whined to her back. “’Sides, ar’ saucers work fine for ashtrays.”
“Saucers are not ashtrays,” stated old Evelyn Garner from the booth behind the two men. She craned her long, skinny neck and trained her owl eyes on them, her lips pinched together in a tight frown. Her husband, Ira Garner, had nothing to say, of course. He rarely did, preferring to let his wife do the talking. Instead, he slurped wordlessly on his tomato soup.
Livvie snatched up the next order slip from the counter and gave it a glance. Then, she lifted two more plates, one of macaroni and cheese, the other of a chicken drumstick and mashed potatoes, and whirled back around, eyeing both men sternly. “I expect you to follow my rules, boys”—she marched past them—“or go next door to Isaac’s, where the smoke’s as thick as cow dung.”
Her saucy remark gave rise to riotous hoots. “You tell ’em, Liv,” someone said—Harv Brewster, perhaps? With the racket of babies crying, patrons chattering, the cash register clinking as Cora Mae Livingston tallied somebody’s order, the screen door flapping open and shut, and car horns honking outside, Livvie couldn’t discern who said what. Oh, how she wished she had the funds to hire a few more waitresses. Some days, business didn’t call for it, but, today, it screamed, “Help!”
“You best listen, fellas. When Livvie Beckman speaks, she means every word,” said another. She turned at the husky male voice but couldn’t identify its source.
“Lady, you oughtta go to preachin’ school,” said yet another unknown speaker.
“She’s somethin’, ain’t she?” There was no mistaking Coot Hermanson’s croaky pipes. Her most loyal customer, also the oldest by far, gave her one of his famous, toothy grins over his coffee cup, which he held with trembling hands. No one really knew Coot’s age, and most people suspected he didn’t know it, himself, but Livvie thought he looked to be a hundred; ninety-nine, at the very least. But that didn’t keep him from showing up at her diner on Market Street every day, huffing from the two-block walk, his faithful black mongrel, Reggie, parked on his haunches under the red and white awning out front, waiting for his usual handout of leftover bacon or the heels of a fresh-baked loaf of bread.
Before scooting past him, she stooped to tap him with her elbow. “I’ll be right back to fill that coffee cup, Coot,” she whispered into his good ear.
He lifted an ancient white eyebrow and winked. “You take your time, missy,” he wheezed back before she straightened and hurried along.
Of all her regulars, Coot probably knew her best—knew about the tough façade she put on, day in and day out; recognized the rawness of her heart, the ache she still carried from the loss of her beloved Frank. More than a year had come and gone since her husband’s passing, but it still hurt to the heavens to think about him. More painful still were her desperate attempts to keep his memory alive for her sons, Alex and Nathan. She’d often rehash how she’d met their father at a church picnic when the two were only teenagers; how he’d enjoyed fishing, hunting, and building things with his bare hands; and how, as he’d gotten older, his love of the culinary arts had planted within him a seed of desire to one day open his own restaurant. She’d tell them how they’d worked so hard to scrimp and save, even while raising a family, and how thrilled Frank had been when that dream had finally come to fruition.
What she didn’t tell her boys was how much she struggled to keep her passion for the restaurant alive in their daddy’s absence. Oh, she had Joe, of course, but he’d dropped the news last week that he’d picked up a new kitchen job in a Chicago diner—some well-known establishment, he’d said—and he could hardly have turned it down, especially with his daughter and grandchildren begging him to move closer to them. Wabash had been home to Joe Stewart since childhood, but his wife had died some five years ago, and he had little to keep him here. It made sense, Livvie supposed, but it didn’t make her life any easier having to find a replacement.
She set down two plates for a couple she’d never seen before, a middle-aged man and his wife. Strangers were always passing through Wabash on their ways north or south, so it wasn’t unusual for her not to know them. “You folks enjoy your lunch,” she said with a smile.
“Thank you kindly,” the man said, licking his lips and loosening his tie. “This meal looks mighty fine.”
Livvie nodded, then made for the coffeepot behind the counter, sensing it was time for a round of refills.
A cloud of smoke still surrounded Charley and Roy’s table, though their cigarettes looked to be nearing their ends. She decided not to mention anything further about their annoying behavior unless they lit up again. Those fools had little compunction and even less consideration for the feelings of others. She would have liked to ban them from her restaurant, if it weren’t for the revenue they brought in with their almost daily visits. Gracious, it cost an awful lot to keep a restaurant going. She would sell it tomorrow if she had a backup plan, but she didn’t. Besides, Frank would bust out of his casket if she hung a “For Sale” sign on the front door. The diner had been his dream, one she’d adopted with gusto because she’d loved him so much, but she hadn’t envisioned his leaving her in the thick of it before they’d paid off their mortgage on the three-story building and turned a good profit on the restaurant.
Oh, why had God taken Frank at such a young age? He’d been thirty-one, married for ten years and a restaurant owner for five. Couldn’t God have intervened and sent an angel just in time to keep Frank from stepping in front of that horse-drawn wagon hauling furniture? And why, for mercy’s sake, did the accident have to occur right in front of the restaurant, drawing a huge crowd and forever etching in her mind’s eye the sight of her beloved lying in the middle of the street, blood oozing from his nose and mouth, his eyes open but not really seeing? Coot often told her that God had her best interests in mind and that she needed to trust Him with her whole heart, but how could she, when it seemed like few things ever went right for her, and she had to work so hard to stay afloat? Goodness, she barely had a minute to spare for her own children.
Swallowing a sigh, she hefted up the coffeepot, which had finished percolating, and started the round of refills, beginning with Coot Hermanson.
***
Will Taylor ground out his last cigarette with the sole of his worn shoe as he leaned against the wall of the train car, his head pounding with every jolt, the whir and buzz of metal against metal ripping through his head. He stared down at his empty pack of Luckies and turned up his mouth in the corner, giving a little huff of self-disgust. He didn’t really smoke—not anymore. But, when he’d left Welfare Island State Penitentiary in New York City in the wee hours of the morning, one of the guards had handed him a fresh pack, along with the few belongings he had to his name, and he’d smoked the entire thing to help pass the time.
Sharing the mostly empty freight car with him were a dozen or so other men, the majority of whom wore unkempt beards, ragged clothing, and long faces. They also stank to the heavens. He figured he fit right in with the lot of them. Frankly, they all looked like a bunch of bums—and probably were, for that matter. Why else would they have jumped aboard the freight car at various stations while the yardmen had their backs turned instead of purchasing a ticket for a passenger car? Will had intended to pay his fare, and he’d even found himself standing in the queue outside the ticket booth, but when he’d counted his meager stash of cash, he’d fallen out of line. Thankfully, the dense morning fog had made his train-jumping maneuver a cinch. If only it could have had the same effect on his conscience. He’d just been released from prison. Couldn’t he get through his first day of freedom without breaking the law?
“Where you headed, mister?” the man closest to him asked.
He could count on one hand the number of minutes anybody on that dark, dingy car had spent engaged in conversation in the hours they’d been riding, and he didn’t much feel like talking now. Yet he turned to the fellow, anyway. “Wabash, Indiana,” he answered. “Heard it’s a nice place.”
Actually, he knew nothing about it, save for the state song, “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away,” which spoke about the river running through it. He’d determined his destination just that morning while poring over a map in the train station, thinking that any other place in the country would beat where he’d spent the last ten years. When he’d overheard someone mention Wabash, he’d found it on the map and, knowing it had its own song, set his mind on going there.
He didn’t know a soul in Wabash, which made the place all the more appealing. Best to make a fresh start anonymously. Of course, he had no idea what he’d do to make a living, and it might be that he’d have to move on to the next town if jobs there were scarce. But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
His stomach growled, so he opened his knapsack and took out an apple, just one of the few items he’d lifted from the jail kitchen the previous night—with the approval of Harry Wilkinson, the kitchen supervisor. The friends he’d made at Welfare Island were few, as he couldn’t trust most folks any farther than he could pitch them, but he did consider Harry a friend, having worked alongside him for the past four years. Harry had told him about the love of God and convinced him not six months ago to give his heart over to Him, saying he’d need a good friend when he left the island and could do no better than the Creator of the universe. Will had agreed, of course, but he sure was green in the faith department, even though he’d taken to reading the Bible Harry had given him—his first and only—almost every night before laying his head on his flat, frayed pillow.
“Wabash, eh?” the man said, breaking into his musings. “I heard of it. Ain’t that the first electrically lighted city in the world? I do believe that’s their claim to fame.”
“That right? I wouldn’t know.”
“What takes you to Wabash?” he persisted, pulling on his straggly beard.
Will pulled on his own thick beard, mostly brown with some flecks of blond, briefly wondering if he ought to shave it off before he went in search of a job. He’d seen his reflection in a mirror that morning for the first time in a week and had nearly fallen over. In fact, he’d had to do some mental calculations to convince himself that he was actually thirty-four years old, not forty-three. Prison had not been kind to his appearance; where he’d slaved under the hot summer sun, digging trenches and hoeing the prison garden, and spent the winters hauling coal and chopping logs. While the work had put him in excellent shape physically, the sun and wind had wreaked havoc on his skin, freckling his nose and arms and wrinkling his forehead. When he hadn’t been outside, he’d worked in a scorching-hot kitchen, stirring kettles of soup, peeling potatoes, cutting slabs of beef, filleting fish, and plucking chickens’ feathers.
“Wabash seemed as good a place as any,” he replied after some thought, determined to keep his answers short and vague.
The fellow peered at him with arched eyebrows. “Where you come from, anyway?”
“Around.”
A chuckle floated through the air but quickly drowned in the train’s blaring whistle. The man dug into his side pocket and brought out a cigar, stuck it in his mouth, and lit the end, then took a deep drag before blowing out a long stream of smoke. He gave a thoughtful nod and gazed off. “Yeah, I know. Me, too.” Across the dark space, the others shifted or slept, legs crossed at the ankles, heads bobbing, not seeming to care about the conversation, if they even heard it.
Will might have inquired after his traveling companion, but his years behind bars had taught him plenty—most important, not to trust his fellow man, and certainly never to divulge his personal history. And posing questions to others would only invite inquiries about himself.
He chomped down his final bite of apple, then tossed the chiseled core onto the floor, figuring a rodent would appreciate it later. Then, he wiped his hands on his pant legs, reached inside his hip pocket, and pulled out his trusty harmonica. Moistening his lips, he brought the instrument to his mouth and started breathing into it, cupping it like he might a beautiful woman’s face. Music had always soothed whatever ailed him, and, ever since he’d picked up the skill as a youngster under his grandfather’s tutelage, he’d often whiled away the hours playing this humble instrument.
He must have played half a dozen songs—“Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” “Over There,” “Amazing Grace,” “The Sidewalks of New York,” and even “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away”—before the shrill train whistle announced their arrival in Wabash. Another stowaway pulled the car door open a crack to peek out and establish their whereabouts.
Quickly, Will stuffed his mouth organ inside his pocket, then stretched his back, the taut muscles tingling from being stationary for so long. At least his pounding headache had relented, replaced now by a mess of tangled nerves. “Reserved excitement” is how he would have described his emotion.
“Nice playin’,” said a man whose face was hidden by the shadow of his low-lying hat. He tipped the brim at Will and gave a slow nod. “You’ve got a way with that thing. Almost put me in a lonesome-type mood.”
“Thanks. For the compliment, I mean. Sorry ’bout your gloomy mood. Didn’t mean to bring that on.”
“Ain’t nothin’. I been jumpin’ trains fer as long as I can remember. Gettin’ the lonelies every now and again is somethin’ to be ’spected, I s’pose.”
“That’s for sure,” mumbled another man, sitting in a corner with his legs stretched out. Will glanced at the sole of his boot and noticed his sock pushing through a gaping hole. Something like a rock turned over in his gut. These guys made a habit of hopping on trains, living off handouts, and roaming the countryside. Vagabonds, they were. He hoped never to see the inside of another freight car, and, by gum, he’d make sure he didn’t—with the Lord’s help, of course. He had enough money to last a couple of weeks, so long as he holed up someplace dirt-cheap and watched what he spent on food. He prayed he’d land a job—any job—in that time. He wouldn’t be choosy in the beginning; he couldn’t afford to be. If he had to haul garbage, well, so be it. He couldn’t expect to do much more than that, not with a criminal record. His hope was that no one would inquire. After all, who but somebody downright desperate would hire an ex-con? Not that he planned to volunteer that bit of information, but he supposed anybody could go digging if they really wanted to know.
He hadn’t changed his name, against Harry’s advice. “I’m not going to run for the rest of my life, Harry,” he’d argued. “Heck, I served my time. It’s not that I plan to broadcast it, mind you, but I’m not going to carry the weight of it forever, either. I wasn’t the only one involved in that stupid burglary.” Though he did shoulder most of the responsibility for committing it. The others had left him to do most of the dirty work, and they’d run off when the law had shown up.
Harry had nodded in silence, then reached up to lay a bony hand on Will’s hulking shoulder. Few people ever laid a hand on him and got away with it, so, naturally, he’d started to pull away, but Harry had held firm, forcing Will to loosen up. “You got a good point there, Will. You’re a good man, you know that?” He hadn’t known that, and he’d appreciated Harry’s vote of confidence. “You just got to go out there and be yourself. Folks will believe in you if you take the first step, start seeing your own self-worth. The Lord sees it, and you need to look at yourself through His eyes. Before you know it, your past will no longer matter—not to you or to anyone else.”
The train brakes screeched for all of a minute, with smoke rising up from the tracks and seeping in through the cracks of the dirty floor. Will choked back the burning residue and stood up, then gazed down at his strange companions, feeling a certain kinship he’d never expected. “You men be safe, now,” he said, passing his gaze over each one. Several of them acknowledged him with a nod, but most just gave him a vacant stare. The fellow at the back of the car who’d spent the entire day sleeping in the shadows finally lifted his face a notch and looked at him—vigilantly, Will thought. Yet he shook off any uneasiness.
The one who’d first struck up a conversation with him, short-lived as it had been, raised his bearded chin. The two made eye contact. “You watch yourself out there, fella. You got to move fast once your feet hit that dirt. Anybody sees you jumpin’ off is sure to report you, and if it’s one of the yardmen, well, you may as well kiss your hiney good-bye. They got weapons on them, and they don’t look kindly on us spongers.”
“Thanks. I’ll be on guard.” Little did the man know how adept he was at handling himself. The years he’d served in the state pen had taught him survival skills he hoped never to have to use in the outside world.
When the train finally stopped, he reached inside his shirt pocket and peeked at his watch, which was missing its chain. Ten minutes after seven. He pulled the sliding door open just enough to fit his bulky body through, then poked his head out and looked around. Finding the coast clear, thanks to a long freight train parked on neighboring tracks, he gave the fellows one last nod, then leaped from the car and slunk off into the gathering dusk, his sack of meager possessions slung over his shoulder.
First item on his short agenda: look for a restaurant where he could silence his grumbling stomach.
May 1926
Wabash, Indiana
“Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song.”
—Psalm 149:1
Smoke rings rose and circled the heads of Charley Arnold and Roy Scott as they sat in Livvie’s Kitchen and partook of steaming coffee, savory roast beef and gravy, and conversation, guffawing every so often at each other’s blather. Neither seemed to care much who heard them, since the whole place buzzed with boisterous midday talk. Folks came to her restaurant to fill their stomachs, Livvie Beckman knew, but, for many, getting an earful of gossip was just as satisfying.
Behind the counter in the kitchen, utensils banged against metal and pots and pans sizzled and boiled with steam and smoke. “Order’s up!” hollered the cook, Joe Stewart. On cue, Livvie carried the two hamburger platters to Pete and Susie Jones’s table and set them down with a hasty smile. Her knee-length, floral cotton skirt flared as she turned, mopping her brow and blowing several strawberry blonde strands of damp hair off her face, and hustled to the counter. “You boys put out those disgusting nicotine sticks,” she scolded Charley and Roy on the run. “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t allow smoking in this establishment? We don’t even have ashtrays.”
“Aw, Livvie, how you expect us t’ enjoy a proper cup o’ coffee without a cigarette?” Charley whined to her back. “’Sides, ar’ saucers work fine for ashtrays.”
“Saucers are not ashtrays,” stated old Evelyn Garner from the booth behind the two men. She craned her long, skinny neck and trained her owl eyes on them, her lips pinched together in a tight frown. Her husband, Ira Garner, had nothing to say, of course. He rarely did, preferring to let his wife do the talking. Instead, he slurped wordlessly on his tomato soup.
Livvie snatched up the next order slip from the counter and gave it a glance. Then, she lifted two more plates, one of macaroni and cheese, the other of a chicken drumstick and mashed potatoes, and whirled back around, eyeing both men sternly. “I expect you to follow my rules, boys”—she marched past them—“or go next door to Isaac’s, where the smoke’s as thick as cow dung.”
Her saucy remark gave rise to riotous hoots. “You tell ’em, Liv,” someone said—Harv Brewster, perhaps? With the racket of babies crying, patrons chattering, the cash register clinking as Cora Mae Livingston tallied somebody’s order, the screen door flapping open and shut, and car horns honking outside, Livvie couldn’t discern who said what. Oh, how she wished she had the funds to hire a few more waitresses. Some days, business didn’t call for it, but, today, it screamed, “Help!”
“You best listen, fellas. When Livvie Beckman speaks, she means every word,” said another. She turned at the husky male voice but couldn’t identify its source.
“Lady, you oughtta go to preachin’ school,” said yet another unknown speaker.
“She’s somethin’, ain’t she?” There was no mistaking Coot Hermanson’s croaky pipes. Her most loyal customer, also the oldest by far, gave her one of his famous, toothy grins over his coffee cup, which he held with trembling hands. No one really knew Coot’s age, and most people suspected he didn’t know it, himself, but Livvie thought he looked to be a hundred; ninety-nine, at the very least. But that didn’t keep him from showing up at her diner on Market Street every day, huffing from the two-block walk, his faithful black mongrel, Reggie, parked on his haunches under the red and white awning out front, waiting for his usual handout of leftover bacon or the heels of a fresh-baked loaf of bread.
Before scooting past him, she stooped to tap him with her elbow. “I’ll be right back to fill that coffee cup, Coot,” she whispered into his good ear.
He lifted an ancient white eyebrow and winked. “You take your time, missy,” he wheezed back before she straightened and hurried along.
Of all her regulars, Coot probably knew her best—knew about the tough façade she put on, day in and day out; recognized the rawness of her heart, the ache she still carried from the loss of her beloved Frank. More than a year had come and gone since her husband’s passing, but it still hurt to the heavens to think about him. More painful still were her desperate attempts to keep his memory alive for her sons, Alex and Nathan. She’d often rehash how she’d met their father at a church picnic when the two were only teenagers; how he’d enjoyed fishing, hunting, and building things with his bare hands; and how, as he’d gotten older, his love of the culinary arts had planted within him a seed of desire to one day open his own restaurant. She’d tell them how they’d worked so hard to scrimp and save, even while raising a family, and how thrilled Frank had been when that dream had finally come to fruition.
What she didn’t tell her boys was how much she struggled to keep her passion for the restaurant alive in their daddy’s absence. Oh, she had Joe, of course, but he’d dropped the news last week that he’d picked up a new kitchen job in a Chicago diner—some well-known establishment, he’d said—and he could hardly have turned it down, especially with his daughter and grandchildren begging him to move closer to them. Wabash had been home to Joe Stewart since childhood, but his wife had died some five years ago, and he had little to keep him here. It made sense, Livvie supposed, but it didn’t make her life any easier having to find a replacement.
She set down two plates for a couple she’d never seen before, a middle-aged man and his wife. Strangers were always passing through Wabash on their ways north or south, so it wasn’t unusual for her not to know them. “You folks enjoy your lunch,” she said with a smile.
“Thank you kindly,” the man said, licking his lips and loosening his tie. “This meal looks mighty fine.”
Livvie nodded, then made for the coffeepot behind the counter, sensing it was time for a round of refills.
A cloud of smoke still surrounded Charley and Roy’s table, though their cigarettes looked to be nearing their ends. She decided not to mention anything further about their annoying behavior unless they lit up again. Those fools had little compunction and even less consideration for the feelings of others. She would have liked to ban them from her restaurant, if it weren’t for the revenue they brought in with their almost daily visits. Gracious, it cost an awful lot to keep a restaurant going. She would sell it tomorrow if she had a backup plan, but she didn’t. Besides, Frank would bust out of his casket if she hung a “For Sale” sign on the front door. The diner had been his dream, one she’d adopted with gusto because she’d loved him so much, but she hadn’t envisioned his leaving her in the thick of it before they’d paid off their mortgage on the three-story building and turned a good profit on the restaurant.
Oh, why had God taken Frank at such a young age? He’d been thirty-one, married for ten years and a restaurant owner for five. Couldn’t God have intervened and sent an angel just in time to keep Frank from stepping in front of that horse-drawn wagon hauling furniture? And why, for mercy’s sake, did the accident have to occur right in front of the restaurant, drawing a huge crowd and forever etching in her mind’s eye the sight of her beloved lying in the middle of the street, blood oozing from his nose and mouth, his eyes open but not really seeing? Coot often told her that God had her best interests in mind and that she needed to trust Him with her whole heart, but how could she, when it seemed like few things ever went right for her, and she had to work so hard to stay afloat? Goodness, she barely had a minute to spare for her own children.
Swallowing a sigh, she hefted up the coffeepot, which had finished percolating, and started the round of refills, beginning with Coot Hermanson.
***
Will Taylor ground out his last cigarette with the sole of his worn shoe as he leaned against the wall of the train car, his head pounding with every jolt, the whir and buzz of metal against metal ripping through his head. He stared down at his empty pack of Luckies and turned up his mouth in the corner, giving a little huff of self-disgust. He didn’t really smoke—not anymore. But, when he’d left Welfare Island State Penitentiary in New York City in the wee hours of the morning, one of the guards had handed him a fresh pack, along with the few belongings he had to his name, and he’d smoked the entire thing to help pass the time.
Sharing the mostly empty freight car with him were a dozen or so other men, the majority of whom wore unkempt beards, ragged clothing, and long faces. They also stank to the heavens. He figured he fit right in with the lot of them. Frankly, they all looked like a bunch of bums—and probably were, for that matter. Why else would they have jumped aboard the freight car at various stations while the yardmen had their backs turned instead of purchasing a ticket for a passenger car? Will had intended to pay his fare, and he’d even found himself standing in the queue outside the ticket booth, but when he’d counted his meager stash of cash, he’d fallen out of line. Thankfully, the dense morning fog had made his train-jumping maneuver a cinch. If only it could have had the same effect on his conscience. He’d just been released from prison. Couldn’t he get through his first day of freedom without breaking the law?
“Where you headed, mister?” the man closest to him asked.
He could count on one hand the number of minutes anybody on that dark, dingy car had spent engaged in conversation in the hours they’d been riding, and he didn’t much feel like talking now. Yet he turned to the fellow, anyway. “Wabash, Indiana,” he answered. “Heard it’s a nice place.”
Actually, he knew nothing about it, save for the state song, “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away,” which spoke about the river running through it. He’d determined his destination just that morning while poring over a map in the train station, thinking that any other place in the country would beat where he’d spent the last ten years. When he’d overheard someone mention Wabash, he’d found it on the map and, knowing it had its own song, set his mind on going there.
He didn’t know a soul in Wabash, which made the place all the more appealing. Best to make a fresh start anonymously. Of course, he had no idea what he’d do to make a living, and it might be that he’d have to move on to the next town if jobs there were scarce. But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
His stomach growled, so he opened his knapsack and took out an apple, just one of the few items he’d lifted from the jail kitchen the previous night—with the approval of Harry Wilkinson, the kitchen supervisor. The friends he’d made at Welfare Island were few, as he couldn’t trust most folks any farther than he could pitch them, but he did consider Harry a friend, having worked alongside him for the past four years. Harry had told him about the love of God and convinced him not six months ago to give his heart over to Him, saying he’d need a good friend when he left the island and could do no better than the Creator of the universe. Will had agreed, of course, but he sure was green in the faith department, even though he’d taken to reading the Bible Harry had given him—his first and only—almost every night before laying his head on his flat, frayed pillow.
“Wabash, eh?” the man said, breaking into his musings. “I heard of it. Ain’t that the first electrically lighted city in the world? I do believe that’s their claim to fame.”
“That right? I wouldn’t know.”
“What takes you to Wabash?” he persisted, pulling on his straggly beard.
Will pulled on his own thick beard, mostly brown with some flecks of blond, briefly wondering if he ought to shave it off before he went in search of a job. He’d seen his reflection in a mirror that morning for the first time in a week and had nearly fallen over. In fact, he’d had to do some mental calculations to convince himself that he was actually thirty-four years old, not forty-three. Prison had not been kind to his appearance; where he’d slaved under the hot summer sun, digging trenches and hoeing the prison garden, and spent the winters hauling coal and chopping logs. While the work had put him in excellent shape physically, the sun and wind had wreaked havoc on his skin, freckling his nose and arms and wrinkling his forehead. When he hadn’t been outside, he’d worked in a scorching-hot kitchen, stirring kettles of soup, peeling potatoes, cutting slabs of beef, filleting fish, and plucking chickens’ feathers.
“Wabash seemed as good a place as any,” he replied after some thought, determined to keep his answers short and vague.
The fellow peered at him with arched eyebrows. “Where you come from, anyway?”
“Around.”
A chuckle floated through the air but quickly drowned in the train’s blaring whistle. The man dug into his side pocket and brought out a cigar, stuck it in his mouth, and lit the end, then took a deep drag before blowing out a long stream of smoke. He gave a thoughtful nod and gazed off. “Yeah, I know. Me, too.” Across the dark space, the others shifted or slept, legs crossed at the ankles, heads bobbing, not seeming to care about the conversation, if they even heard it.
Will might have inquired after his traveling companion, but his years behind bars had taught him plenty—most important, not to trust his fellow man, and certainly never to divulge his personal history. And posing questions to others would only invite inquiries about himself.
He chomped down his final bite of apple, then tossed the chiseled core onto the floor, figuring a rodent would appreciate it later. Then, he wiped his hands on his pant legs, reached inside his hip pocket, and pulled out his trusty harmonica. Moistening his lips, he brought the instrument to his mouth and started breathing into it, cupping it like he might a beautiful woman’s face. Music had always soothed whatever ailed him, and, ever since he’d picked up the skill as a youngster under his grandfather’s tutelage, he’d often whiled away the hours playing this humble instrument.
He must have played half a dozen songs—“Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” “Over There,” “Amazing Grace,” “The Sidewalks of New York,” and even “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away”—before the shrill train whistle announced their arrival in Wabash. Another stowaway pulled the car door open a crack to peek out and establish their whereabouts.
Quickly, Will stuffed his mouth organ inside his pocket, then stretched his back, the taut muscles tingling from being stationary for so long. At least his pounding headache had relented, replaced now by a mess of tangled nerves. “Reserved excitement” is how he would have described his emotion.
“Nice playin’,” said a man whose face was hidden by the shadow of his low-lying hat. He tipped the brim at Will and gave a slow nod. “You’ve got a way with that thing. Almost put me in a lonesome-type mood.”
“Thanks. For the compliment, I mean. Sorry ’bout your gloomy mood. Didn’t mean to bring that on.”
“Ain’t nothin’. I been jumpin’ trains fer as long as I can remember. Gettin’ the lonelies every now and again is somethin’ to be ’spected, I s’pose.”
“That’s for sure,” mumbled another man, sitting in a corner with his legs stretched out. Will glanced at the sole of his boot and noticed his sock pushing through a gaping hole. Something like a rock turned over in his gut. These guys made a habit of hopping on trains, living off handouts, and roaming the countryside. Vagabonds, they were. He hoped never to see the inside of another freight car, and, by gum, he’d make sure he didn’t—with the Lord’s help, of course. He had enough money to last a couple of weeks, so long as he holed up someplace dirt-cheap and watched what he spent on food. He prayed he’d land a job—any job—in that time. He wouldn’t be choosy in the beginning; he couldn’t afford to be. If he had to haul garbage, well, so be it. He couldn’t expect to do much more than that, not with a criminal record. His hope was that no one would inquire. After all, who but somebody downright desperate would hire an ex-con? Not that he planned to volunteer that bit of information, but he supposed anybody could go digging if they really wanted to know.
He hadn’t changed his name, against Harry’s advice. “I’m not going to run for the rest of my life, Harry,” he’d argued. “Heck, I served my time. It’s not that I plan to broadcast it, mind you, but I’m not going to carry the weight of it forever, either. I wasn’t the only one involved in that stupid burglary.” Though he did shoulder most of the responsibility for committing it. The others had left him to do most of the dirty work, and they’d run off when the law had shown up.
Harry had nodded in silence, then reached up to lay a bony hand on Will’s hulking shoulder. Few people ever laid a hand on him and got away with it, so, naturally, he’d started to pull away, but Harry had held firm, forcing Will to loosen up. “You got a good point there, Will. You’re a good man, you know that?” He hadn’t known that, and he’d appreciated Harry’s vote of confidence. “You just got to go out there and be yourself. Folks will believe in you if you take the first step, start seeing your own self-worth. The Lord sees it, and you need to look at yourself through His eyes. Before you know it, your past will no longer matter—not to you or to anyone else.”
The train brakes screeched for all of a minute, with smoke rising up from the tracks and seeping in through the cracks of the dirty floor. Will choked back the burning residue and stood up, then gazed down at his strange companions, feeling a certain kinship he’d never expected. “You men be safe, now,” he said, passing his gaze over each one. Several of them acknowledged him with a nod, but most just gave him a vacant stare. The fellow at the back of the car who’d spent the entire day sleeping in the shadows finally lifted his face a notch and looked at him—vigilantly, Will thought. Yet he shook off any uneasiness.
The one who’d first struck up a conversation with him, short-lived as it had been, raised his bearded chin. The two made eye contact. “You watch yourself out there, fella. You got to move fast once your feet hit that dirt. Anybody sees you jumpin’ off is sure to report you, and if it’s one of the yardmen, well, you may as well kiss your hiney good-bye. They got weapons on them, and they don’t look kindly on us spongers.”
“Thanks. I’ll be on guard.” Little did the man know how adept he was at handling himself. The years he’d served in the state pen had taught him survival skills he hoped never to have to use in the outside world.
When the train finally stopped, he reached inside his shirt pocket and peeked at his watch, which was missing its chain. Ten minutes after seven. He pulled the sliding door open just enough to fit his bulky body through, then poked his head out and looked around. Finding the coast clear, thanks to a long freight train parked on neighboring tracks, he gave the fellows one last nod, then leaped from the car and slunk off into the gathering dusk, his sack of meager possessions slung over his shoulder.
First item on his short agenda: look for a restaurant where he could silence his grumbling stomach.
When Mother's Day is Difficult by Holley Gerth
AND ... do enter the contest for a chance to win a beautiful hand crafted pearl necklace. To enter, just {CLICK THIS LINK} and fill out the short form. Contest runs 5/1-5/8 and the winner will on 5/11. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.
If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit http://www.pearlgirls.info/ and see what we're all about. In short, we exist to support the work of charities that help women and children in the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls™ products (all GREAT Mother's Day gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.
And to all you MOMS out there! Happy Mother's Day!
When Mother's Day is Difficult by Holley Gerth
I have a confession (anyone surprised?). I have mixed feelings about Mother’s Day.
On one hand, I love celebrating all the women who have made a difference in my life (thanks, Mom!).
On the other hand, a long journey of infertility has left my heart with some tender places.
On May 8th, we’ll celebrate Mother’s Day once again. For many, it’s a time of appreciation and joy. For others, it can be one of the most difficult days of the year. This is often true for women facing infertility, families who have recently experienced the loss of a mother, and many other painful situations.
At one point in my life it seemed as if I couldn’t take another step. In addition to infertility, I was facing several other losses. I felt as if I were in a dark cave. But then I sensed the Lord gently and lovingly speak to my heart, “You may be in a cave, but you still have a choice. You can sit in despair or you can diamond-mine your difficulties.” I decided I was not leaving that time in my life empty-handed. I was taking every hidden blessing I could find. Of course, I still had difficult days. But choosing hope made a difference.
As a reminder, I now wear two rings. The one on the fourth finger of my left hand represents my commitment to my husband. The one on the fourth finger of my right hand is a simple silver band inscribed with the word “hope” and it represents the commitment I have made to God and myself to hold onto hope no matter what happens.
The story of an inspiring woman named Terrie also reminds me to hold onto hope. She endured the loss of four pregnancies and waited seventeen years before adopting a little girl. She told me, “I think one of the most important parts of this journey is learning to trust God. I don’t mean the flippant kind of trust. It’s easy for people to say, ‘You just need to trust God.’ It’s much harder when you’re in the middle of all this pain. But he is trustworthy. Through it all, God has given us an amazing story. I wouldn’t have chosen this road, but he has been with us. I can look back and truly say every step was worth it.”
I don’t know how my journey will end and you probably don’t know how yours will either. I also don’t know how many of you will be silently grieving your losses as we sit in church together on May 8th. But I do know that God sees each one of us. He knows how many hairs are on our heads and how many cares our in our hearts. Whatever you’re going through this Mother’s Day, you’re not facing it alone. As King David, a man who experienced many losses in his life, expressed in Psalm 34:18 NIV, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” May God surround you with love, fill you with hope, and give you strength for each moment—especially this Mother’s Day.
Excerpted from When Mother’s Day is Difficult.
Holley Gerth is an award-winning writer for DaySpring, a cofounder of the popular web site (in)courage, and licensed counselor. Holley loves chocolate, coffee, Jesus and connecting with the hearts of women through words. Her next book, a devotional titled God's Heart for You: Embracing Your True Worth as a Woman (Harvest House) will release this July. You can find Holley online through her blog Heart to Heart with Holley.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
The Fitting Room: Putting On the Character of Christ
David C. Cook; New edition (April 1, 2011)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kelly Minter is a singer/worship leader, a recording artist, a popular speaker, and the author of two books (Water into Wine and No Other Gods) and three Bible studies (No Other Gods, Ruth, and Hannah’s One Wish). Among her CDs is one based on insights from her Bible study on Ruth. Minter resides in Nashville, TN.Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Kelly Minter explores what it means—in real life—to “clothe” ourselves (Col. 3:12) in Christian virtues like forgiveness, joy, patience, compassion, and more. Can we really “dress up” in the character of Christ? Kelly Minter says the answer is yes—if we let the Master Designer do the fitting. This relatable book offers insightful Scripture study with real-life stories and simple, down-to-earth explanations of tricky concepts such as justification and sanctification—stitching it all together with dry humor and down-to-earth honesty. There are no gimmicks, no guilt trips, just an irresistible invitation for women to enjoy a spiritual makeover—to put on a life that’s personally tailored by the One who knows and loves them best.Product Details:
List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: David C. Cook; New edition (April 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1434799859
ISBN-13: 978-1434799852
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Where Are They When You Need Them?
The Virtues
A video shoot for a wonderful author and friend is taking place at my house this week. Stylists, cameramen, set designers, talent, and black-clad crew have been running around my home for days. The entire shebang has absolutely nothing to do with me except that twenty people are now using my bathroom. This is a girl’s recurring nightmare. I’ve decided the only true payoff is the round-the-clock
catering, which produces warm cookies every afternoon around three-ish—a routine I am trying to understand how I have lived so richly without.
This morning as the crew arrived, I feverishly applied the last few elements of makeup onto my slightly puffy and pillow-wrinkled face. I threw on my work-at-home uniform, which is made up of jeans, a
T-shirt, and socks if the hardwoods are chilled, flip-flops if it’s summertime. As I meandered through the kitchen—for the catering, of course—I ran into a stylist I knew who was working with the talent. I told her I needed help finding new boots for the winter. She agreed at an alarming rate, well acquainted with my wanting shoe collection. Her exaggerated urgency was tongue-in-cheek, but with a hint of dead-serious. After all, she is a stylist. Clothes are what she does.
If ever there was a spell in history when what we wear is paramount, I daresay it is now. Dress is a multibillion-dollar industry. The garments we drape on our backs, the hats we don on our heads, the jewelry that dangles from our necks and wrists all tell a little of who we are. Our dress is an expression of ourselves, a statement of our personalities or moods. We dress up, we dress down, we dress for comfort, we kill ourselves in high heels to dress for style, we dress for the weather, we dress for others, we dress for ourselves. But what about the dress of our souls? What about the way our character clothes us? And our character does clothe us. We give off far more than we will ever know by the way we greet the barista, drive in traffic, enter a room, answer the phone, glare at our toddler who’s having a meltdown in a non-meltdown-friendly environment. If only it were as simple as hiring a stylist for an extra bag of peace or another color of honesty. Could I get some denim patience for under $100?
I promise not to kill you with the clothing metaphor for the next several thousand words, but I want to pull from the comparison the apostle Paul set in motion in a letter to the Colossians: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (3:12). A few verses earlier he writes, “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (vv. 9–10). The image of clothing, the picture of slipping out of the old and sliding into the new, is an easily digestible concept because we dress every day.
The gap in the metaphor comes when we don’t know how to clothe ourselves in Christ’s character, or when we’ve given it our valiant best and come up short … really short—like we just walked out the door in our towel, and everyone is staring and mortified while we grasp for fig leaves from our ailing character-garden. The breakdown occurs when we were never taught the value of integrity, when anger
and resentment were the prominent traits our parents passed down, when we weren’t modeled the fine art of forgiveness, when sexual escapades were our solution for loneliness, when lying seemed to work better than the truth at untangling our predicaments, or when complaining became our default over contentment.
Basically, the spiritual concept of throwing off scratchy wool for designer silk sounds simply effortless, but the real-life version is another matter altogether. Many of us who have attempted such a wardrobe overhaul have come up frustrated rather than inspired, and this for many reasons we will address in the pages to come. I hope to speak to these struggles while looking at specific character qualities less from an academic view and more from the vantage point of our everyday realities. Because most of us know we’re supposed to take off old things like bitterness and anger and full-on recklessness and put on the new self, which is full of qualities such as kindness and joy and self-control. But knowing this doesn’t automatically make it so.
I can fairly easily write about what these new-life virtues are, their characteristics, and how we need more of them in our lives, but that feels just about as helpful as the book I was reading last night that appropriately told me not to eat out of boredom or past seven o’clock, which triggered the thought that I might be a little bored, which reminded me of the homemade cinnamon-raisin bread I had in the kitchen. Before I could be held responsible for my actions, I had lost my place in the book and was standing in my pajama pants eating bread.
See, I’m pretty sure most of us need more heart transformation than we need more head knowledge, whether it’s about food or far more important things like exhibiting the character of Christ. Knowledge is vitally important, but it seems so many of us in Western Christianity are just crammed with it—really important knowledge that we gain in controlled settings like Bible study—but when up against the prospect of forgiving someone who has just ripped our insides out, or needing to grab patience out of thin air after our roommate has just stepped on our ever-loving last nerve, we are left with a ton of knowledge about what we should do (don’t eat the bread when you’re bored) but have no idea how to do it.
I had the rare blessing of growing up with parents who modeled and taught the character of Christ well. They were big on the “how” of character and emphasized it over most everything else: A struggling grade on an algebra exam was more excusable than lying (which ended up working heavily in my favor … coefficients?); an off game on the basketball court was no problem compared to being disrespectful to a teacher. My parents taught my siblings and me at a young age about humility, gentleness, patience, contentment, gratefulness, purity, and so on. This doesn’t mean I’m good at all these things; it just means I had the privilege of being taught them. And now that I am past most of my adolescent outbursts and full-on temper tantrums—so often directed toward my parents’ instruction—I am ever thankful for their guidance. If only they could get paid back in stocks or something.
Still, the virtues revealed in Scripture are hard enough when you’ve been taught them. But what if you’ve never been exposed to them in the first place? Perhaps it is in response to this question that my deepest desire for the following pages is to shed fresh light on some of the seemingly shadowed and antiquated virtues in Scripture, exposing their beauty, their delicacy, and the freedom in which they are meant to tailor our lives. This is important because so many of us are plainly stuck in life, wearing the same old things and getting the same miserable results. Our character clothes are frumpy, because we’ve never been groomed and fitted from the pages of Scripture.
There are others who are all too aware of the characteristics of godliness but want nothing to do with them, because they were taught such virtues by people who didn’t actually live by those principles. For them, the notion of godly character was flaunted by hypocrites, self-righteous leaders, or possibly angry parents, and they haven’t wanted a piece of its polyester since. Yes, a lot of damage has been done in the name of God and Christian virtue; people have been clothed by reckless tailors. However, one of my greatest hopes is that if this has been your experience, you will give the discovery of authentic godliness another look, because biblical virtues are not punitive but life-giving.
If there are those who have had little exposure to what the Bible says about godly character and those who have had lots of exposure but find it legalistic and binding, then there is a third group as well: those who long to grasp hold of godly traits but find them maddeningly unattainable. Perhaps you have tried to wear godliness like you try to lose weight or work out or stick to a New Year’s resolution. You’ve dug deep but have found that things like moral purity, kindness, or humility simply don’t exist in your closet. You’ve worn the knock-off brands that faintly resemble the real thing, but after a few good washes of reality, their colors fade and their seams split. And so you find yourself not necessarily disdaining the virtues, but having given up on them.
This is a common dilemma, mostly because we mistakenly view godly character qualities as things we can accomplish if we try just a little harder. We promise ourselves we’ll hold our tongues next time or be thankful for what we have. Perhaps one day we muse we’ll graduate to stretching our reserve of patience, or we’ll respect ourselves enough to stop sleeping with acquaintances. But we can never separate the qualities of God from God Himself. True Christian virtues are not something we can slap on ourselves like cutout clothes for paper dolls. They come as a result of heart change that is accomplished through the supernatural love of Jesus. And yes, we will expound on this more, because I am challenging myself not
to offer Christian colloquialisms that are easy to throw out; even though some of them are true, most are vague and inaccessible. I have experienced the frustrating failures of trying to “do better” as a Christian. I’ve been damaged by legalistic authorities whose preaching and practicing lived in entirely different zip codes. And I’ve had times when I just didn’t know much about the heart behind godly virtue, even though my parents gave me a great foundation. Still, the authentic changes that the gentle and unyielding characteristics of holiness have brought about—and are bringing about—in my life are wholly divine and transforming. Not to mention enormously practical.
Practical, because there are relationships that need to be healed from the cancer of bitterness. There are bones that need to be freed from the incessant gnaw of anger. Hurting neighbors who need to hear an encouraging word of kindness instead of the latest morsel of gossip. Children who need to know that we’ve been blessed in our Western society and that contentment is healthier than complaining. Husbands who need peaceful wives instead of anxious ones; wives who need comforting husbands instead of critical ones. Friends who need to be given to instead of demanded from.
I recently wrote a piece that included a list of several virtues, and I asked women to chime in on the virtues they found the most difficult. This was a bit of a trick question, because the virtues are probably all equally hard in their own right, but I was curious as to what their comments would include. I could not have been more delighted by one woman’s sincere reply: “I think I have plenty of each when I don’t need
them. It is only when I am in the situation that I discover that the one I need is the one that I am short of.” This is pure genius. I pondered her sentiments as a possible subtitle to this book: Clothing Yourself in the Virtues You’ve Got Plenty of Until You Need Them.
Of course the very essence of biblical virtues is that they’re only virtues when they’re being tested: Patience is not patience if someone or something is not trying it. Forgiveness is not forgiveness if there is no offense to pardon. Humility is not humility if a person never has to bow. Biblical virtues need to be studied and defined, but if we leave them in the Christian classroom, we will find we’ve got a wardrobe literally bursting with them until the moment we’re invited to the ball.
If this is has been your experience as it has often been mine—if you find that you have virtues in droves until the moment you need them—it may help to go back to the beginning. To begin with God and what He has accomplished that enables us to live all the virtues He embodies. Much of this can be summed up in the opening line of Colossians 3:12: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved …” See, we can’t really get to the virtues in Scripture until we have a good handle on the truth that we have been chosen, made holy, and are dearly loved. If we take this introductory line away, we are left with a list of dos (clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience …) without any context for them.
Once we understand the context, the way is paved for the oftenpainful work of parting with our old wardrobes, even that A-outfit from college we’re pretty sure we’d still look fabulous in. ’Cause the old and the new don’t coalesce—our human natures don’t meld with the character of Christ. But leaving the old behind can be surprisingly liberating, because it leaves us poised to wear the virtues we will explore in the pages ahead: forgiveness, peace, kindness, humility, compassion, and patience, with a sassy feather of joy in our hats. Virtues that won’t mysteriously disappear when the clock strikes twelve, ones that will actually be there when we need them.
The Virtues
A video shoot for a wonderful author and friend is taking place at my house this week. Stylists, cameramen, set designers, talent, and black-clad crew have been running around my home for days. The entire shebang has absolutely nothing to do with me except that twenty people are now using my bathroom. This is a girl’s recurring nightmare. I’ve decided the only true payoff is the round-the-clock
catering, which produces warm cookies every afternoon around three-ish—a routine I am trying to understand how I have lived so richly without.
This morning as the crew arrived, I feverishly applied the last few elements of makeup onto my slightly puffy and pillow-wrinkled face. I threw on my work-at-home uniform, which is made up of jeans, a
T-shirt, and socks if the hardwoods are chilled, flip-flops if it’s summertime. As I meandered through the kitchen—for the catering, of course—I ran into a stylist I knew who was working with the talent. I told her I needed help finding new boots for the winter. She agreed at an alarming rate, well acquainted with my wanting shoe collection. Her exaggerated urgency was tongue-in-cheek, but with a hint of dead-serious. After all, she is a stylist. Clothes are what she does.
If ever there was a spell in history when what we wear is paramount, I daresay it is now. Dress is a multibillion-dollar industry. The garments we drape on our backs, the hats we don on our heads, the jewelry that dangles from our necks and wrists all tell a little of who we are. Our dress is an expression of ourselves, a statement of our personalities or moods. We dress up, we dress down, we dress for comfort, we kill ourselves in high heels to dress for style, we dress for the weather, we dress for others, we dress for ourselves. But what about the dress of our souls? What about the way our character clothes us? And our character does clothe us. We give off far more than we will ever know by the way we greet the barista, drive in traffic, enter a room, answer the phone, glare at our toddler who’s having a meltdown in a non-meltdown-friendly environment. If only it were as simple as hiring a stylist for an extra bag of peace or another color of honesty. Could I get some denim patience for under $100?
I promise not to kill you with the clothing metaphor for the next several thousand words, but I want to pull from the comparison the apostle Paul set in motion in a letter to the Colossians: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (3:12). A few verses earlier he writes, “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (vv. 9–10). The image of clothing, the picture of slipping out of the old and sliding into the new, is an easily digestible concept because we dress every day.
The gap in the metaphor comes when we don’t know how to clothe ourselves in Christ’s character, or when we’ve given it our valiant best and come up short … really short—like we just walked out the door in our towel, and everyone is staring and mortified while we grasp for fig leaves from our ailing character-garden. The breakdown occurs when we were never taught the value of integrity, when anger
and resentment were the prominent traits our parents passed down, when we weren’t modeled the fine art of forgiveness, when sexual escapades were our solution for loneliness, when lying seemed to work better than the truth at untangling our predicaments, or when complaining became our default over contentment.
Basically, the spiritual concept of throwing off scratchy wool for designer silk sounds simply effortless, but the real-life version is another matter altogether. Many of us who have attempted such a wardrobe overhaul have come up frustrated rather than inspired, and this for many reasons we will address in the pages to come. I hope to speak to these struggles while looking at specific character qualities less from an academic view and more from the vantage point of our everyday realities. Because most of us know we’re supposed to take off old things like bitterness and anger and full-on recklessness and put on the new self, which is full of qualities such as kindness and joy and self-control. But knowing this doesn’t automatically make it so.
I can fairly easily write about what these new-life virtues are, their characteristics, and how we need more of them in our lives, but that feels just about as helpful as the book I was reading last night that appropriately told me not to eat out of boredom or past seven o’clock, which triggered the thought that I might be a little bored, which reminded me of the homemade cinnamon-raisin bread I had in the kitchen. Before I could be held responsible for my actions, I had lost my place in the book and was standing in my pajama pants eating bread.
See, I’m pretty sure most of us need more heart transformation than we need more head knowledge, whether it’s about food or far more important things like exhibiting the character of Christ. Knowledge is vitally important, but it seems so many of us in Western Christianity are just crammed with it—really important knowledge that we gain in controlled settings like Bible study—but when up against the prospect of forgiving someone who has just ripped our insides out, or needing to grab patience out of thin air after our roommate has just stepped on our ever-loving last nerve, we are left with a ton of knowledge about what we should do (don’t eat the bread when you’re bored) but have no idea how to do it.
I had the rare blessing of growing up with parents who modeled and taught the character of Christ well. They were big on the “how” of character and emphasized it over most everything else: A struggling grade on an algebra exam was more excusable than lying (which ended up working heavily in my favor … coefficients?); an off game on the basketball court was no problem compared to being disrespectful to a teacher. My parents taught my siblings and me at a young age about humility, gentleness, patience, contentment, gratefulness, purity, and so on. This doesn’t mean I’m good at all these things; it just means I had the privilege of being taught them. And now that I am past most of my adolescent outbursts and full-on temper tantrums—so often directed toward my parents’ instruction—I am ever thankful for their guidance. If only they could get paid back in stocks or something.
Still, the virtues revealed in Scripture are hard enough when you’ve been taught them. But what if you’ve never been exposed to them in the first place? Perhaps it is in response to this question that my deepest desire for the following pages is to shed fresh light on some of the seemingly shadowed and antiquated virtues in Scripture, exposing their beauty, their delicacy, and the freedom in which they are meant to tailor our lives. This is important because so many of us are plainly stuck in life, wearing the same old things and getting the same miserable results. Our character clothes are frumpy, because we’ve never been groomed and fitted from the pages of Scripture.
There are others who are all too aware of the characteristics of godliness but want nothing to do with them, because they were taught such virtues by people who didn’t actually live by those principles. For them, the notion of godly character was flaunted by hypocrites, self-righteous leaders, or possibly angry parents, and they haven’t wanted a piece of its polyester since. Yes, a lot of damage has been done in the name of God and Christian virtue; people have been clothed by reckless tailors. However, one of my greatest hopes is that if this has been your experience, you will give the discovery of authentic godliness another look, because biblical virtues are not punitive but life-giving.
If there are those who have had little exposure to what the Bible says about godly character and those who have had lots of exposure but find it legalistic and binding, then there is a third group as well: those who long to grasp hold of godly traits but find them maddeningly unattainable. Perhaps you have tried to wear godliness like you try to lose weight or work out or stick to a New Year’s resolution. You’ve dug deep but have found that things like moral purity, kindness, or humility simply don’t exist in your closet. You’ve worn the knock-off brands that faintly resemble the real thing, but after a few good washes of reality, their colors fade and their seams split. And so you find yourself not necessarily disdaining the virtues, but having given up on them.
This is a common dilemma, mostly because we mistakenly view godly character qualities as things we can accomplish if we try just a little harder. We promise ourselves we’ll hold our tongues next time or be thankful for what we have. Perhaps one day we muse we’ll graduate to stretching our reserve of patience, or we’ll respect ourselves enough to stop sleeping with acquaintances. But we can never separate the qualities of God from God Himself. True Christian virtues are not something we can slap on ourselves like cutout clothes for paper dolls. They come as a result of heart change that is accomplished through the supernatural love of Jesus. And yes, we will expound on this more, because I am challenging myself not
to offer Christian colloquialisms that are easy to throw out; even though some of them are true, most are vague and inaccessible. I have experienced the frustrating failures of trying to “do better” as a Christian. I’ve been damaged by legalistic authorities whose preaching and practicing lived in entirely different zip codes. And I’ve had times when I just didn’t know much about the heart behind godly virtue, even though my parents gave me a great foundation. Still, the authentic changes that the gentle and unyielding characteristics of holiness have brought about—and are bringing about—in my life are wholly divine and transforming. Not to mention enormously practical.
Practical, because there are relationships that need to be healed from the cancer of bitterness. There are bones that need to be freed from the incessant gnaw of anger. Hurting neighbors who need to hear an encouraging word of kindness instead of the latest morsel of gossip. Children who need to know that we’ve been blessed in our Western society and that contentment is healthier than complaining. Husbands who need peaceful wives instead of anxious ones; wives who need comforting husbands instead of critical ones. Friends who need to be given to instead of demanded from.
I recently wrote a piece that included a list of several virtues, and I asked women to chime in on the virtues they found the most difficult. This was a bit of a trick question, because the virtues are probably all equally hard in their own right, but I was curious as to what their comments would include. I could not have been more delighted by one woman’s sincere reply: “I think I have plenty of each when I don’t need
them. It is only when I am in the situation that I discover that the one I need is the one that I am short of.” This is pure genius. I pondered her sentiments as a possible subtitle to this book: Clothing Yourself in the Virtues You’ve Got Plenty of Until You Need Them.
Of course the very essence of biblical virtues is that they’re only virtues when they’re being tested: Patience is not patience if someone or something is not trying it. Forgiveness is not forgiveness if there is no offense to pardon. Humility is not humility if a person never has to bow. Biblical virtues need to be studied and defined, but if we leave them in the Christian classroom, we will find we’ve got a wardrobe literally bursting with them until the moment we’re invited to the ball.
If this is has been your experience as it has often been mine—if you find that you have virtues in droves until the moment you need them—it may help to go back to the beginning. To begin with God and what He has accomplished that enables us to live all the virtues He embodies. Much of this can be summed up in the opening line of Colossians 3:12: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved …” See, we can’t really get to the virtues in Scripture until we have a good handle on the truth that we have been chosen, made holy, and are dearly loved. If we take this introductory line away, we are left with a list of dos (clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience …) without any context for them.
Once we understand the context, the way is paved for the oftenpainful work of parting with our old wardrobes, even that A-outfit from college we’re pretty sure we’d still look fabulous in. ’Cause the old and the new don’t coalesce—our human natures don’t meld with the character of Christ. But leaving the old behind can be surprisingly liberating, because it leaves us poised to wear the virtues we will explore in the pages ahead: forgiveness, peace, kindness, humility, compassion, and patience, with a sassy feather of joy in our hats. Virtues that won’t mysteriously disappear when the clock strikes twelve, ones that will actually be there when we need them.
Where Are They When You Need Them?
The Virtues
A video shoot for a wonderful author and friend is taking place at my house this week. Stylists, cameramen, set designers, talent, and black-clad crew have been running around my home for days. The entire shebang has absolutely nothing to do with me except that twenty people are now using my bathroom. This is a girl’s recurring nightmare. I’ve decided the only true payoff is the round-the-clock
catering, which produces warm cookies every afternoon around three-ish—a routine I am trying to understand how I have lived so richly without.
This morning as the crew arrived, I feverishly applied the last few elements of makeup onto my slightly puffy and pillow-wrinkled face. I threw on my work-at-home uniform, which is made up of jeans, a
T-shirt, and socks if the hardwoods are chilled, flip-flops if it’s summertime. As I meandered through the kitchen—for the catering, of course—I ran into a stylist I knew who was working with the talent. I told her I needed help finding new boots for the winter. She agreed at an alarming rate, well acquainted with my wanting shoe collection. Her exaggerated urgency was tongue-in-cheek, but with a hint of dead-serious. After all, she is a stylist. Clothes are what she does.
If ever there was a spell in history when what we wear is paramount, I daresay it is now. Dress is a multibillion-dollar industry. The garments we drape on our backs, the hats we don on our heads, the jewelry that dangles from our necks and wrists all tell a little of who we are. Our dress is an expression of ourselves, a statement of our personalities or moods. We dress up, we dress down, we dress for comfort, we kill ourselves in high heels to dress for style, we dress for the weather, we dress for others, we dress for ourselves. But what about the dress of our souls? What about the way our character clothes us? And our character does clothe us. We give off far more than we will ever know by the way we greet the barista, drive in traffic, enter a room, answer the phone, glare at our toddler who’s having a meltdown in a non-meltdown-friendly environment. If only it were as simple as hiring a stylist for an extra bag of peace or another color of honesty. Could I get some denim patience for under $100?
I promise not to kill you with the clothing metaphor for the next several thousand words, but I want to pull from the comparison the apostle Paul set in motion in a letter to the Colossians: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (3:12). A few verses earlier he writes, “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (vv. 9–10). The image of clothing, the picture of slipping out of the old and sliding into the new, is an easily digestible concept because we dress every day.
The gap in the metaphor comes when we don’t know how to clothe ourselves in Christ’s character, or when we’ve given it our valiant best and come up short … really short—like we just walked out the door in our towel, and everyone is staring and mortified while we grasp for fig leaves from our ailing character-garden. The breakdown occurs when we were never taught the value of integrity, when anger
and resentment were the prominent traits our parents passed down, when we weren’t modeled the fine art of forgiveness, when sexual escapades were our solution for loneliness, when lying seemed to work better than the truth at untangling our predicaments, or when complaining became our default over contentment.
Basically, the spiritual concept of throwing off scratchy wool for designer silk sounds simply effortless, but the real-life version is another matter altogether. Many of us who have attempted such a wardrobe overhaul have come up frustrated rather than inspired, and this for many reasons we will address in the pages to come. I hope to speak to these struggles while looking at specific character qualities less from an academic view and more from the vantage point of our everyday realities. Because most of us know we’re supposed to take off old things like bitterness and anger and full-on recklessness and put on the new self, which is full of qualities such as kindness and joy and self-control. But knowing this doesn’t automatically make it so.
I can fairly easily write about what these new-life virtues are, their characteristics, and how we need more of them in our lives, but that feels just about as helpful as the book I was reading last night that appropriately told me not to eat out of boredom or past seven o’clock, which triggered the thought that I might be a little bored, which reminded me of the homemade cinnamon-raisin bread I had in the kitchen. Before I could be held responsible for my actions, I had lost my place in the book and was standing in my pajama pants eating bread.
See, I’m pretty sure most of us need more heart transformation than we need more head knowledge, whether it’s about food or far more important things like exhibiting the character of Christ. Knowledge is vitally important, but it seems so many of us in Western Christianity are just crammed with it—really important knowledge that we gain in controlled settings like Bible study—but when up against the prospect of forgiving someone who has just ripped our insides out, or needing to grab patience out of thin air after our roommate has just stepped on our ever-loving last nerve, we are left with a ton of knowledge about what we should do (don’t eat the bread when you’re bored) but have no idea how to do it.
I had the rare blessing of growing up with parents who modeled and taught the character of Christ well. They were big on the “how” of character and emphasized it over most everything else: A struggling grade on an algebra exam was more excusable than lying (which ended up working heavily in my favor … coefficients?); an off game on the basketball court was no problem compared to being disrespectful to a teacher. My parents taught my siblings and me at a young age about humility, gentleness, patience, contentment, gratefulness, purity, and so on. This doesn’t mean I’m good at all these things; it just means I had the privilege of being taught them. And now that I am past most of my adolescent outbursts and full-on temper tantrums—so often directed toward my parents’ instruction—I am ever thankful for their guidance. If only they could get paid back in stocks or something.
Still, the virtues revealed in Scripture are hard enough when you’ve been taught them. But what if you’ve never been exposed to them in the first place? Perhaps it is in response to this question that my deepest desire for the following pages is to shed fresh light on some of the seemingly shadowed and antiquated virtues in Scripture, exposing their beauty, their delicacy, and the freedom in which they are meant to tailor our lives. This is important because so many of us are plainly stuck in life, wearing the same old things and getting the same miserable results. Our character clothes are frumpy, because we’ve never been groomed and fitted from the pages of Scripture.
There are others who are all too aware of the characteristics of godliness but want nothing to do with them, because they were taught such virtues by people who didn’t actually live by those principles. For them, the notion of godly character was flaunted by hypocrites, self-righteous leaders, or possibly angry parents, and they haven’t wanted a piece of its polyester since. Yes, a lot of damage has been done in the name of God and Christian virtue; people have been clothed by reckless tailors. However, one of my greatest hopes is that if this has been your experience, you will give the discovery of authentic godliness another look, because biblical virtues are not punitive but life-giving.
If there are those who have had little exposure to what the Bible says about godly character and those who have had lots of exposure but find it legalistic and binding, then there is a third group as well: those who long to grasp hold of godly traits but find them maddeningly unattainable. Perhaps you have tried to wear godliness like you try to lose weight or work out or stick to a New Year’s resolution. You’ve dug deep but have found that things like moral purity, kindness, or humility simply don’t exist in your closet. You’ve worn the knock-off brands that faintly resemble the real thing, but after a few good washes of reality, their colors fade and their seams split. And so you find yourself not necessarily disdaining the virtues, but having given up on them.
This is a common dilemma, mostly because we mistakenly view godly character qualities as things we can accomplish if we try just a little harder. We promise ourselves we’ll hold our tongues next time or be thankful for what we have. Perhaps one day we muse we’ll graduate to stretching our reserve of patience, or we’ll respect ourselves enough to stop sleeping with acquaintances. But we can never separate the qualities of God from God Himself. True Christian virtues are not something we can slap on ourselves like cutout clothes for paper dolls. They come as a result of heart change that is accomplished through the supernatural love of Jesus. And yes, we will expound on this more, because I am challenging myself not
to offer Christian colloquialisms that are easy to throw out; even though some of them are true, most are vague and inaccessible. I have experienced the frustrating failures of trying to “do better” as a Christian. I’ve been damaged by legalistic authorities whose preaching and practicing lived in entirely different zip codes. And I’ve had times when I just didn’t know much about the heart behind godly virtue, even though my parents gave me a great foundation. Still, the authentic changes that the gentle and unyielding characteristics of holiness have brought about—and are bringing about—in my life are wholly divine and transforming. Not to mention enormously practical.
Practical, because there are relationships that need to be healed from the cancer of bitterness. There are bones that need to be freed from the incessant gnaw of anger. Hurting neighbors who need to hear an encouraging word of kindness instead of the latest morsel of gossip. Children who need to know that we’ve been blessed in our Western society and that contentment is healthier than complaining. Husbands who need peaceful wives instead of anxious ones; wives who need comforting husbands instead of critical ones. Friends who need to be given to instead of demanded from.
I recently wrote a piece that included a list of several virtues, and I asked women to chime in on the virtues they found the most difficult. This was a bit of a trick question, because the virtues are probably all equally hard in their own right, but I was curious as to what their comments would include. I could not have been more delighted by one woman’s sincere reply: “I think I have plenty of each when I don’t need
them. It is only when I am in the situation that I discover that the one I need is the one that I am short of.” This is pure genius. I pondered her sentiments as a possible subtitle to this book: Clothing Yourself in the Virtues You’ve Got Plenty of Until You Need Them.
Of course the very essence of biblical virtues is that they’re only virtues when they’re being tested: Patience is not patience if someone or something is not trying it. Forgiveness is not forgiveness if there is no offense to pardon. Humility is not humility if a person never has to bow. Biblical virtues need to be studied and defined, but if we leave them in the Christian classroom, we will find we’ve got a wardrobe literally bursting with them until the moment we’re invited to the ball.
If this is has been your experience as it has often been mine—if you find that you have virtues in droves until the moment you need them—it may help to go back to the beginning. To begin with God and what He has accomplished that enables us to live all the virtues He embodies. Much of this can be summed up in the opening line of Colossians 3:12: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved …” See, we can’t really get to the virtues in Scripture until we have a good handle on the truth that we have been chosen, made holy, and are dearly loved. If we take this introductory line away, we are left with a list of dos (clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience …) without any context for them.
Once we understand the context, the way is paved for the oftenpainful work of parting with our old wardrobes, even that A-outfit from college we’re pretty sure we’d still look fabulous in. ’Cause the old and the new don’t coalesce—our human natures don’t meld with the character of Christ. But leaving the old behind can be surprisingly liberating, because it leaves us poised to wear the virtues we will explore in the pages ahead: forgiveness, peace, kindness, humility, compassion, and patience, with a sassy feather of joy in our hats. Virtues that won’t mysteriously disappear when the clock strikes twelve, ones that will actually be there when we need them.
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