Digging through my daddy’s cards (and wondering when I would find the time to write this week) I came across a note that connects to last week’s story about sanctuary.
This one is postmarked September 17, 1996.
Dear Julie Doll, It was great to see you and HUG you this weekend…
Praying & Loving U, Daddy
These words about our Friday night hug felt like a bow to wrap up my previous writing (and, if I’m honest, a way to buy me more time to write my intended blog post.)
I’ve heard an encounter such as this called a “coinci-God” – a little moment divinely orchestrated to give a glimpse of His love and encourage us through our days.
Our school system released plans last week for returning students to class in August. A long thread of concerns about COVID attached immediately to the announcement which offered basic information about in-person and online learning options.
In the middle of the comments and criticisms, one mother’s question:
“Where can I find the school supply list?”
I laughed out loud.
Me too, sister.
I’m ready for my daughters to go to school. I’m ready to introduce optimism, however fickle, that life may go on in ways they wish. My preference does not diminish my worry. On the contrary it potentially adds a new layer of anxiety.
Still, I’m ready.
They are ready.
Abby Kate has endured two cancelled camps this summer. Sunday night, she cried because a third one was postponed. A(nother) change of plans beyond our control.
I calmed Abby Kate’s tears. Then, I called my mom who had invited them to visit.
“Do you still want two girls this week?”
Of course she did.
I started to pack suitcases and, as I folded their clothes, considered the gift of home.
My childhood home has long been my sanctuary.
The front porch of my childhood home.
Troy State University was considered a suitcase college when I attended in the 1990s. Students deserted on the weekends and I was usually one of them. Regardless of my week, my spirit lifted a little bit higher as my Honda Accord closed the gap between my dorm and my parents’ driveway. I walked in the back door to a hug from my daddy and a meal from mom. Bonus: mom usually washed my laundry, too.
Last summer I experienced similar respite but without the hug from my daddy.
I’d spent 4 days with Abby Kate at a church camp called Passport. As GPS navigated my Ford Edge along the roads back home to Bayview, I felt a familiar surge in my spirit despite physical and emotional exhaustion. I walked in the back door as I always have and, as she always has, mom took care of lunch and laundry. I took a nap. That house is still the place where I get my best rest.
Abby Kate and Lily are resting there this week. Lily is likely lounging in an oversized chair in the corner of the living room. Abby Kate always claims the recliner. Both are probably tethered to their iPads while cable TV broadcasts in the background, Food Network or The Weather Channel.
Bidee, the name they call my mom, lets them stay up as late as they want. She fills her kitchen with foods they like. (She also did that for my brothers and me.) Bonus: their cousins sometimes come for a visit.
My childhood house is their sanctuary now, too.
Part of my heart wishes they could stay there, tucked into the slower pace of an old coal mining community that, though decades have passed, remains more Mayberry than metropolis. Reality reminds me not even Mayberry is immune to the effects of a pandemic.
COVID lingers. Life calls. And regardless of our want or approval it often calls us to hard things.
The good news is we can do hard things:
Practice patience. Extend empathy. Give grace.
Maybe we can demonstrate these Spirit-filled practices first towards school leaders who are stressed about plans to return students to class in August.
I dug out a card from my daddy that I remembered as I wrote about his Friday night welcome home hugs. It’s postmarked April 8, 1998.
Be careful on your way home. A BIG HUG is waiting on you. Love & Praying, Daddy
Sanctuary isn’t always found at a place. Sometimes it’s felt in people. They solidify our faith, hope and love even after they’re gone.
I have not had a hug from my daddy, Friday or any other night, in almost 13 years. When I miss him or need him, I wrap myself in his words. They always point me to Jesus “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)
Refuge.
Sanctuary.
May we find it.
May we be it.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
The 7 day forecast on the local TV news app confirms the calendar has flipped to July.
You don’t need technology to recognize hot temperatures are here. Open a door to the outside and you’ll feel the sticky Alabama air.
It’s summertime.
Two pair of swim goggles hang from bar stools in my kitchen. Ice cream trucks jingle through our neighborhood. Bedtime, like the early sunsets of the season, stretches later and later.
But the surest snapshot of summer will, to me, always be an orange Igloo water jug and a yellow box of Popsicles. You know, the red, purple and orange ones.
Nobody ever wanted the orange ones.
Those brightly colored containers cradle more than the cool refreshment of my childhood. They also carry memories of Vacation Bible School at Bayview Baptist Church, always the first week of August.
My friend Brandi provided this picture of VBS. We estimate it was taken 1986 or 1987.
Dozens of kids swarmed the church parking lot during VBS afternoons playing tag or kickball or jump rope.
Sonny Coe sat on the edge of his pickup truck bed next to the orange Igloo cooler that’s etched in my mind, a stack of cone-shaped white paper cups also on his tailgate.
It wasn’t just hot. It was Alabama-in-August hot.
Sonny’s water cooler was an oasis on a sea of asphalt. Sweaty and red-faced we lined up for refreshment, biding time until the wooden white doors were opened, inviting us into the (literal) sanctuary of air-conditioning.
Sonny Coe with (I think) a girl named Rachel.
From our pews inside we pledged allegiance to the American flag, the Christian flag and the Bible, “God’s Holy Word.”
We sang about the “Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy” down in our hearts, and if the devil didn’t like it he could “sit on a tack.”
In our basement classrooms, we placed foil star stickers – red or blue or green or gold or silver – next to our names on the attendance chart.
We learned about Bible characters from paper cutouts placed on a felt-covered board.
We made picture frames from popsicle sticks to hold Polaroid pictures of ourselves, which we proudly displayed at parents’ night.
Teachers could have collected enough sticks to craft those frames from the frozen treats we devoured at evening’s end.
Popsicles were a signature Bible School snack.
Memaw Granade, known also on Sunday mornings for her purse filled with an array of Wrigley’s gum, greeted us in front of the Fellowship Hall each evening at the conclusion of VBS class. Smiling, and with the proverbial patience of Job, she held her yellow Popsicle box and tried to honor our flavor requests.
We never asked for cherry, grape or orange; instead we called for the corresponding color.
“Red! Purple!”
If we didn’t get what we wanted we tried to trade with a generous or less picky friend.
Memaw Granade with some of her grands and their friends.
Many, many summers have passed since I stood in line at Sonny Coe’s orange cooler or picked a Popsicle from Memaw Granade’s yellow box.
Memories refresh me now.
The hot asphalt on my feet. The cool air-conditioning on my skin. The warm spirit that made Bayview Baptist Church “home.”
What are you thirsty for in this season of summer and life?
Refreshment can be found in varied places.
In a parking lot. In a pew. In a Popsicle.
Or, in people.
People like Sonny Coe and Memaw Granade who stood outside in the sticky, August-in-Alabama air to offer refreshment and, with it, the love of Jesus.
Because only in Him are we truly refreshed.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the man who takes refuge in Him.”
