Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

The other day, I was writing a southernliving.com story about Southerners and funerals, and it gave me an excuse to look through some of the old hymnals and quartet books that used to anchor the song service on Harvest Day, our church's annual fall homecoming. Reading those old songs made me remember so many voices: our friend Sandra's soprano harmonizing with my mother's alto; Jenny Glenn's beautiful descant to "He Keeps Me Singing"'; Mr. H.F. Sewell's voice, filled with emotion, as he sang words he felt down deep in his soul and led the choir and congregation.

Sometimes I think we don't realize just how connected we are to each other in the moment. It's only when we look back that we see it—only in retrospect that we understand how much those bonds have meant to us and how they have shaped who we are.  

Years ago, Bill and Gloria Gaither wrote a song called "The Family of God," which became one of their many gospel standards. I love the line, "When one has a heartache, we all share the tears and rejoice in each vict'ry of this family so dear." What a sharp contrast to just about everything we see on TV or read on the internet.We're not meant to be at each other's throats. We're meant to treat each other like family. 

A prayer this morning: May we all find the bonds of love, friendship, and support that will shield us during our personal storms and celebrate with us when the sun breaks through.

[Image by Joy Zaehringer @ Freerangestock.com]

 

Sunday Morning Serenity

My friend Nancy gave me a bracelet with the inscription, For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to give you HOPE and a FUTURE. (Jeremiah 29:11)

I wore that bracelet every day when I first went back to Southern Living because I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to measure up. And also because I couldn’t see where my life was going—all these seemingly random things kept happening to me, but they weren’t leading anywhere—or so I thought. I’m not talking about a period of weeks or months—I’m talking about a period of six years. My parents and Dave kept assuring me that everything would eventually come together, but I couldn't see it. 

I still wear Nancy’s bracelet anytime I’m feeling anxious or insecure—which is to say, regularly. But I also wear it to remind myself of something I learned from some brilliant scientists for whom I freelanced at the UAB School of Nursing: You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s why we explore.

You don’t know what you don’t know—and we have no idea how much God knows that we don’t. When I left Southern Living back in 2010, I started Goin’ Down to Mama’s with visions of creating my own audience, my own little digital magazine of sorts. And I worked really hard at it. I couldn’t understand why God didn’t bless me with a huge audience that would attract enough advertising to pay the power bill and keep Hank and Cheeto in Fancy Feast. Eventually, I got discouraged and stopped posting very much, except on Sunday, which was the one piece that always seemed to draw readers. I decided I had to focus on paying jobs.

Now, having gone back to the magazine and worked with some mighty savvy young digital editors, I know why I wasn’t blessed with that huge audience: Because I knew absolutely nothing about search engine optimization or the gazillion other things I needed to know in order to be successful online. Also, some of those “it’s not great but it’s good enough for a blog” posts that I wrote? Ick. I look back at them and think, “You could’ve done a whole lot better—and readers deserve a whole lot better.” Bottom line: I hadn’t prepared myself for what I thought I wanted.

Working on the magazine’s 50^th anniversary book was, without a doubt, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because there was so much pressure to deliver quality (and so much emotion attached to it—I was writing about the people who had mentored and nurtured me for years). But through that very difficult project, I met an editor who would later become my agent and sell my first novel (thank you, Leslie Stoker). And I was invited back to the magazine, where I’ve seen the most success in the pieces I write for . . . the website—the kind of writing I used to do on my blog. All those humor pieces that I labeled “all for nothing” back in 2012 and 2013—they were schooling me to write for southernliving.com, and I’ve had more fun doing that than I’ve had on any other job in a long, long time.

The moral of this rambling story: If you keep putting one foot in front of the other and praying for guidance, that “complete waste of time” that’s frustrating you right now might be preparing you for something pretty amazing down the road. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Sunday Morning Serenity

Traveling a Mississippi highway this morning, heading home. Dave and I have been on the Gulf, taking a break from the real world. But now we're going home, and that's good, too. I miss "the boys"—Hank and Cheeto the Cats:) Thinking of all the people on another coast who have just come through a terrible storm—and wishing everyone blue skies and calm waters this morning.

Sunday Morning Serenity

A while back, my friend Gary asked me to play around with mock covers for a book I wanted to write. As you can see from the above assemblage, I am no graphic designer. But I still think the picture is interesting—to me, anyway. When I took it, I labeled it "Girl Stuff." That's my mother on the right and her older sister, my Aunt Vivian, on the left. Mama has always been a little bit of a tomboy, given that she spent most of her time, as a child, under the watch care of her older brother, who taught her to swim, hunt, and fish. We were laughing about that the other day—I said, "Do you realize you might be a completely different person if Uncle Chick hadn't raised you?" She was the baby of 8 kids, so the older siblings looked after the younger ones. 

Mama's feminine side was nurtured by her two older sisters, Aunt Vivian and Aunt Joyce—who untangled her hair when she came home from the swimming hole and made most of her clothes. Aunt Vivian was a girly girl if ever there was one (though she, too, could handle a firearm). I always forget that her birthday is in the fall because to me, she was the human embodiment of springtime. Most every year, around February, I'll ask my mother, "Isn't Aunt Vivian's birthday coming up in March?" And she'll shake her head and correct me. Again. 

I get my obsession with tableware from Aunt Vivian. At home, we only broke out "the good stuff" for company—most especially the family at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and the traveling preacher during summer revivals. But Aunt Vivian used her china and silver for everything. She gave me my first serious tablecloth when I got my first apartment in Birmingham. Wherever she went, she made the world around her just a little prettier and the people around her just a little bit happier. 

That's a gift. If you've been anywhere near a television or the internet lately, you know just how ugly this world can get. And I'm grateful, this Sunday morning, for people like Aunt Vivian, who give so much more than they take; who are always looking for a way that they can help other people; who bring a little springtime just by walking into a room.