I’VE ALWAYS loved company. I grew up in a home where the front door was seldom locked and a constant stream of friends and relatives enriched our lives with their warmth and conversation. I learned the art of hospitality by watching my parents welcome guests into our home…
How would you finish this statement: “I hate… ”? If your mother was like mine, you learned at a very early age to be careful how you used that word hate. Never, for example, would I entertain the thought of inserting a person’s name in the blank after hate. You don’t hate people.
I remember, now. I stood, one day, waiting.
That gathered group of friends waited, too.
We waited for the mothers to take their seats,
And then, for bride’s maids to slowly walk,
Whether I remember to ask Him, or not. Whether I even take notice of Him, or not, He is there. How, I wonder, would things be different, if I would just address and confess? Yes, confess … the sin of ungratefulness in my life?
I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story. But it’s been long enough now. I guess I can tell you. One cool March day in the early Spring of 1991, something happened to me that changed my life. It didn’t seem like a particularly momentous thing at the time, really.
I’ve never been troubled much with it before, but this morning as I sat, pondering ‘the way things are,’ a bothersome thought crossed my mind. The more I dwelt on it, the more it nagged at me . . . something I think I forgot. I’m not sure there’s much I can do about it now. Maybe that’s the reason I was troubled. It has to do with ‘talk.’
Sit in a room full of moms, and mention the day they became a mom,
And you’ll hear the noise level rise.
And the looks in their eyes,
And the depth of their sighs will tell you: The stories are about to begin.
CLARA DIED YESTERDAY. I saw her for the first time several months ago while we were visiting relatives in her hometown. I had heard about her before, but the sight was more than I expected. The locals called her the “Garbage Lady.” She couldn’t get inside her house, because it was full of garbage.
Sometimes when I tell stories, people ask me if they are true. And I say to them, “Yes, they are true stories, and yes, they really did happen.” Usually, the one who has asked the question will smile and nod, and I will smile and nod back. It’s always nice to write a story that brings warmth and encouragement to another.
People who are close to me—(I don’t mean close to me relationally, I mean, literally ‘close to me’)— know that I wear hearing aids. I wear them because, several months ago, my wife told me, in so many words, that I needed to have my hearing checked. It seemed to her that I wasn’t ‘hearing’ her very well. I told her I could hear her fine; I just couldn’t understand what she was saying.