Julie Echols Reyburn

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. 

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.”

(Psalm 46:1)

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.

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.

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.

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.”

(Psalm 34:8)

I don’t have a blog post today.

Actually I have two started, but neither is near finished to my satisfaction. They aren’t even GETMO (Good Enough to Move On) as I heard author Jo Saxton once say. So, after sitting up past 2:00 this morning trying to force them finished, I decided to leave them for another day.

Two nights ago, as I typed somewhat desperately to make my thoughts make sense, I found a pair of index cards with a Bible lesson from my daddy.

I was attempting a blog post about detours. I’ll give you one guess what was written on those index cards.

Y’all, if we ask and seek and knock God will answer us.

• 

• 

Daddy was studying in the book of Acts about Paul’s travels to spread the gospel.

“They went through the region of Phyrgia and Galatia and were prevented by the Holy Spirit from speaking the message in Asia. When they came to Mysia, they tried to go to Bythinia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So, bypassing Mysia they came down to Troas. During the night a vision appeared to Paul…” (Acts 16: 6-9)

This is what Daddy wrote on his index cards:

“Paul attempted to go south into Asia (but) the spirit of God stop(ped) him. So Paul thought he would go north toward Turkey. In Acts 16:7 the Spirit of God held them up again… so Paul went west as far as Troas – so he waited in Troas for God to show him the way. God held Paul up to show him that he is to wait on God(‘s) direction to go in to share the gospel to the world. We like Paul need to be patience and wait upon the Lord.”

God called me to write two years ago, and this blog is a way for me to be faithful. Now, the Spirit is prompting me to detour. I need to explore new avenues of writing.

One thing I’ve got to tackle (and it sort of terrifies me) is technology. I also want to consider (again, terrified!) a book outline for sharing my daddy’s letters.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING.

But I’m trusting that God does, and believing that if I am obedient to the Spirit He will lead me.

I am still going to write here. My goal now is once a week instead of two, likely still on Mondays or Fridays.

If you are so inclined, I invite you to hit the “subscribe” button on my blog, beneath my photo and bio, so that once (if?) I figure out the tech-y stuff you’ll be the first to know. I assure you; your inbox is safe for the foreseeable future because did I mention I have no idea what I’m doing?

(And would you look at that? Looks like I squeaked out a blog post after all!)

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

(Matthew 7:7-8)

Summer days were different in the early ‘90s, quarantine not included.

My daughters bounce between screens:
1) iPad
2) Netflix
3) Nintendo Switch

Their list goes on.

My list was short.
1) The television.

I confess to the luxury of living room vs. bedroom TV viewing, though the one in my bedroom was limited to 4 channels.

On summer days, with mom and dad at work, I opted for the cable-equipped, wood-enclosed set in our living room.

(I got a kick texting my brothers this picture of a mammoth Zenith brand contraption I found on Google. To our recollection it’s pretty close to the set we owned.)

The confine of TV entertainment is only part of my teenage summertime story.  

A spiral bound, five subject notebook holds other memories, including a Sweet 16 birthday wish penciled by my daddy.

Talk about a time capsule.

In summer months, my high school self shuffled out of bed (usually around 10:00am) to a to-do list, also written in that notebook, laid on our kitchen table.

Daddy’s familiar scrawl listed in age order our daily chores. One of mine was ironing clothes.

• 

• 

A new shirt I wore this weekend reminded me of my summertime task. It’s a yellow tee with lyrics to Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” stenciled on front:

“Here’s Your One Chance”

(Singing it, are you? You’re welcome.)

Like Reba, I remember it all very well looking back.

My mom kept a laundry basket in the closet of our study. (That’s just what we call the room with all the books. We aren’t that elite.) When a load of laundry was dry, mom placed whatever required ironing into that basket. During the summer, it was my job to empty the basket.

To add entertainment to my ironing, I set up in the living room because cable TV, remember?

I watched hours (hours!) of country music videos on CMT (Country Music Television) from behind that ironing board and basket. I hadn’t thought about my chore, or the way it pressed country music into my memory, in years.

Until I saw that shirt.

And, despite a drawer-full, I knew I had to have it.

Music connects us to moments in time. Some of them significant, others so simple they seem easily forgotten.

Mom’s ironing board (with daddy’s instruction to use it) represents both.

It taught me obedience.
It taught me responsibility.
It taught me words to Reba McEntire’s music.

Significance and simplicity.

Good life lessons to learn during summer days.

“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

(Proverbs 22:6)

My mom shared the content of today’s blog post in a Facebook memory earlier this week.

It is the 2019 Father’s Day tribute to my daddy.

I did not attempt a new writing for him this year. I hope this blog will honor him every day because, as I wrote on Facebook one year ago, the “regular” days and moments are the ones that matter most to me.

(Originally posted to Facebook on June 16, 2019.)

Father’s Day is not automatically an emotional day for me.

I felt the sting of nostalgia as our church honored dads with a roll of Lifesavers candy. My daddy kept Wint-O-Green ones in his dresser drawer. I pilfered them, along with his cinnamon-flavored Certs.

But on the whole this day is OK for me.

Daddy was born on Christmas Day, and he died on Thanksgiving Day. The unexpected truth is that holidays are not hard. I’m actually quite stoic.

The un-holidays, well, those are tricky and there are a lot more of them.

For example, December 14, 2017. Kids to Love, the non-profit where I work, was a flurry of activity that morning as social workers converged on our warehouse to collect Christmas gifts for foster children. Our Tennessee counties had enough boxes and bags to require an 18-wheeler. I hurried to the parking lot to see how I could help and stopped in my tracks when I saw a man, about the age my daddy would have been, standing beside that big rig, wearing a pair of Liberty overalls.

My breath caught and my tears fell and I felt like I was 7-years-old or even 17-years-old, watching my daddy walk in the backdoor of our home wearing his Liberty overalls, covered in coal dust.

So to honor my daddy today, here’s a picture of him wearing his Liberty overalls. This is what sacrifice looks like. He worked six days a week in the damp, dark underground of a coal mine. He never missed a band concert or a football game or an awards ceremony. He was not perfect, but he was present.

In his last days with Alzheimer’s disease daddy couldn’t remember much. He couldn’t remember how to work a TV remote, or count money or button a shirt. But mom says the night before he went in to the hospital (for a procedure he would not recover from) he remembered my brothers and me. Mom says he told her “We’ve got good kids.”

Maybe I’m biased but he does have good kids, and we have him to thank for that.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy, from your Julie Doll.

“But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord’s love is with those who fear Him, and his righteousness with their children’s children.”

(Psalm 103:17)

It’s odd the way a memory can feel at once like yesterday and a lifetime ago.

June. 2019.

We were halfway through Jeff’s deployment to Afghanistan when a wish was realized: Jeff would travel to the States to attend a conference in Tampa, Florida.

He and I knew the possibility early into his mission but caution outweighed optimism so we kept it quiet. Still, it was hard not to hope.

One Friday morning, while Lily was at art camp, my cell phone rang with a video call from Jeff. Abby Kate was in the car with me and, after we disconnected, observed “Why is daddy in a different place? He’s not in his room.”

Nothing gets by that girl.

Jeff was in Kuwait, awaiting a flight. (Ku-waiting, as Lily later joked.)

I re-directed Abby Kate until Jeff could share the good news with both girls together. He called again a short while later to see Lily’s art display and, once we had moved her masterpieces into my car, told them he was traveling to Florida. The girls and I were going to see him.

It may have been the most excitement the sidewalk we were standing on has ever seen.

Two days later, we loaded with my mom into her Toyota Avalon (she didn’t want us on the road alone) and headed south to Tampa.

The drive was excruciating and not just because we were so close, yet so far away.

I fought a migraine almost the entire way.

Jeff met me in the lobby with affection and Imitrex. It was not the moving moment I’d envisioned after months apart but in sickness and in health, right?

Also, thank you Publix for transferring my prescription.

In our room (and after I medicated) we selfie-d our excitement to text a few close friends. For the first time in months we were a family again.

Together.

And then…

Our five days ended too soon. We had to leave. The girls and I were returning to the comforts of home.

Jeff was not.

I believe it was the hardest moment of our 13-year marriage. And harder days were ahead.

Our time together in Tampa triggered something in my spirit. Until that week, I had walked confidently through Jeff’s deployment. Now, six more months felt like a life sentence.

I started to sleep a lot. I told myself I was just tired but rest did not renew me physically or otherwise.

I could not ease the emptiness.

One evening as I sat (again? still?) in bed, I mustered a prayer that felt equal parts puny and powerful:

“I can’t keep living like this,” I confessed.

Because “this” was not living.

And then…

I can’t say I heard Him. It was more like I felt Him. But I know without a doubt it was Him.

God spoke:

“Just do the next thing.”

So, I stood up. I walked to the laundry room. I put clothes into the washing machine.

“Do the next thing.”

I retreated to the kitchen. I loaded the dishwasher.

“Do the next thing.”

With every step and effort I found supernatural strength and energy.

“Do the next thing.”

Those four words became my lifeline.

“Do the next (right) thing” continued to show itself for the duration of Jeff’s deployment. It was the message Thanksgiving week in the movie “Frozen 2” and, I discovered much later, a popular book title and podcast.

I am reading the book now.

Author Emily P. Freeman writes:

            “Rather than a life plan, a clear vision, or a five-year list of goals, the leper, the paralytic, and Jairus and his wife were given clear instructions by Jesus about what to do next – and only next. Perhaps he knew something about our addiction to clarity. He knew if we could somehow wrangle a five-year plan out of him, we would take it and be on our merry way.” (Chapter 1, Do the Next Right Thing.)

Wouldn’t we though?

I felt, and probably looked, rather pitiable as I sat in my bed barely able to pray.  

God could have said “Hang in there, Julie. Jeff will be back in October for two weeks of R&R. He’ll make it home for Christmas though it’s gonna be a close call. Oh, and he will also make it home alive so there’s no need to worry or pray or trust.”  

I would have welcomed such specific assurances. They would have more easily sustained me through uncertain and difficult days. But receiving all the answers at once would have robbed me of the relationship God wanted for me – a deeper relationship with Him built on faith and trust.

I think about the Lord’s Prayer written in Matthew 6: 9-13. My daddy points out in his study (and I shared this in my prior post “The Merry-Go-Round”) that in verse 11 we are to ask God to give us “this day” what we need. Not this week or this month or this year.

This day.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

My Bible interprets the verse in this way: Ask God to meet even your most mundane needs to accomplish your spiritual duties.

I expected God to walk me through a lot of things during Jeff’s deployment. I didn’t expect laundry to be one of them. His summons to “do the next thing” – even if it was literally a chore – taught me that He is in the details. If He cares about my laundry, how much more will He care about my life?

Faith is a common theme throughout my writings. I learned it, or more accurately am learning it, from my daddy.

Faith is what I want to teach my girls.

Faith is the legacy I choose to live.

One built on a memory that feels at once yesterday and a lifetime ago.

“Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body and clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: they don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? … Learn how the wildflowers of the field grow; they don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that’s how God clothes the grass on the field… won’t he do much more for you – you of little faith?”

(Matthew 6:25-30)

A week ago I began to experience technical issues with my blog.

Ugh.

They are not resolved, and I am tired, so I’m pulling a previous writing not yet shared here.

(This post is from the hope*writers reimagine writing challenge. It originally posted to Instagram on May 14th. The word prompt was “restore.”)

I wrote recently on my blog about my “spot” and how God speaks to me most clearly and deeply when I retreat to sacred spots along my faith journey.

My Ebenezer(s), if you will.

One of those spots for me is the Baptist Campus Ministry building at Troy State University. 

The BCM was the cornerstone of my college years.

I met my very best friends in that building.

Many days, I met God in that building.

Each Monday night, the BCM hosted a worship service we called Alpha Omega.  The program included praise songs, student stories and a word from the Word given by a guest speaker.

As a freshman navigating a new world (one that included an ornery old English professor) I carried a lot of stress. I hid the weight of that emotion deep in my heart. So deep, neither my eyes or my smile ever betrayed it.

Monday night worship music became a balm to me.  It didn’t erase my anxiety, but it soothed my spirit.

Tonight, 20+ years later, my heart still sings:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God
And renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Your presence, O Lord.
Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me, the Joy of my salvation.
And renew a right spirit within me.”

It’s easy to let my environment, be it college professor or global pandemic, influence my attitude.

I sometimes forget the joy of my salvation.

But God always restores it, especially when I seek Him in my spots. 

P.S. I learned to love my professor. This pandemic, not so much.

“Create in me a clean heart, O God
And renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Your presence, O Lord.
Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me, the Joy of my salvation.
And renew a right spirit within me.”

(Psalm 51: 10-12)

Harry Potter paraphernalia covers my kitchen table.

The books, of course.
Paper plates.
Themed chocolates.
The brown Sorting Hat. It was a gift from Jeff.

Come to think of it, my books were also gifts from him.

I began reading the books, borrowed from my brother, while Jeff & I were dating.

I started the Harry Potter stories not out of curiosity but boredom.  I was visiting my daddy who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and could not be home alone. Mom was away for a weekend with her sisters.

Daddy was asleep in his recliner. I sat curled on the couch. I retrieved the book from my younger brother’s bedroom and started to read.

I couldn’t stop. I read the first two books that weekend.

Now, a jar of Floo Powder decorates our fireplace mantel. A Platform 9 ¾ logo hangs in our foyer.  A Lego of my favorite character, Dobby, adorns my desk.

It seems silly, I know.

But these books have carried me through “dark and difficult times.” (That’s another HP reference.) Such as caring for my daddy one weekend because he could no longer care for himself.

I wasn’t sure what to write about today.

As my family wrapped a Harry Potter movie marathon (the reason for my themed kitchen table) I kept coming back to this quote from Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry:

            “You think the dead we have loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him.” – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

My daddy is alive in me. He is why I write, and he is why that quote matters to me.

I believe it may matter to someone else.

I attended a funeral last week for a friend whose father died. I know several others who are grieving the death of a parent, a spouse, even a child.

Words won’t erase pain, but the right ones can comfort. Even if they come from a children’s book about a boy wizard.

And that, too, is why I write.

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children…”

(Proverbs 13:22)

Grief is complicated.

It masks as sadness and, maybe, sometimes that’s all it is.

Maybe not.

Probably not.

I know grief. My daddy died when he was 58 years old. My best friend Susie died when she was 32 years old.

Grief is close.

And grief, I have learned, has layers. I discovered those layers not when I lost my daddy or my Susie, but when my daughter Abby Kate lost a pet. A pet shrimp.

Yes, I said shrimp.

We bought Abby Kate an aquarium for her 9th birthday (she wanted a pet) and filled it with 3 fish, 2 frogs and 4 ghost shrimp. The animal expert assured us all three species could live well together and they did. For about a month.

One summer afternoon, a piercing scream permeated Abby Kate’s room. Wailing, she had witnessed one of her fish eat one of her shrimp.

I scooped her up (Abby Kate, not the shrimp) and carried her to our living room couch. I consoled her as she cried. Eventually the tears stopped, and the questions started.

First, she was confused. She wondered why one pet would eat another.

Later, she was angry. She declared she would not feed that fish anymore.

Finally, she felt fear. She asked to sleep with us, afraid to ever look again into her aquarium.

Confusion.
Anger.
Fear.

Grief.

Abby Kate’s story may seem a shallow example of these emotions.  If we examine honestly our own experiences with grief, we will see how deep it runs.

Grief is complicated and hard. We like simple and easy. So, we accept grief’s disguise as sadness and tell ourselves, maybe, that’s all it is.

Maybe not.

Probably not.

My daddy knew emotions, left unidentified and unchecked, could tempt me into trouble.

“Dear Julie Doll,” he wrote. “I hope and pray that your faith is strong enough to keep your spiritual feet on Holy Ground during the emotional times that you have been thru and will continue to stand on the solid rock in the future. Our lives should not be held hostage by our weak emotions but by our faith that we get from God’s word. The devil laughs at us when we are controlled by our fleshly emotions but he trembles when we stand on God’s Holy Word.”

Our world is wrought with emotion right now.

Confusion. 
Anger. 
Fear. 

Grief.

We feel it deeply.

God understands. He holds us as we walk through it. But He doesn’t want us to stay there.

Whether we dwell is our choice. The way we respond is our choice. Making the right choice will require courage.

Courage to clear our confusion.
Courage to channel our anger.
Courage to overcome our fear.

Abby Kate’s aquarium is empty now. The shrimp “disappeared.” The frogs died. The fish did, too, but that was our fault (and a story for another day.)

Abby Kate has refused new fish.

Fear lingers.

Last week, though, on our way to the grocery store we passed the pet store. Abby Kate glanced it through her window.

“Maybe we can just go look,” she considered.

It will take courage.

I know she’s got it inside of her.

I believe we all do.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

(Matthew 5: 3-10)

My hands reached into Lily’s bouncer one morning when she was months old (I can’t remember how many) and I found soggy cereal.  Not the soft, wean-baby-from-the-bottle kind. 

Froot Loops.

The offender was our adorable Abby Kate, who thought her sister looked hungry.

A Facebook post, not long after the Froot Loops fiasco, captures a 10-month-old Lily attempting the stairs to wake Abby Kate from her nap.

I love these stories.

They are defining moments in my daughters’ journey as sisters and as friends.

Earlier this month I added another narrative.

I am grateful every day for the way they care for each other.

(This content was originally posted to Instagram on May 12, 2020 for the hope*writers “Reimagine” 2020 writing challenge. The prompt word was “reach.”)

Pop-tarts are shelved at the highest point in our pantry.

It’s not with any particular purpose; it’s where we store our breakfast foods, including cereal and oatmeal.

I have said many (many!) times it is time for me to re-organize. My daughters, at ages 8 and 11, are capable of toasting a Pop-tart or pouring cereal should my husband and I sleep in on a Saturday.

If they can reach them.

I was in the bed last week, sick and sleeping, when I vaguely heard a little voice.

“Sissy, can you help me?” asked my 8-year-old, Lily.

I dozed off.

At bedtime, many hours later, my 11-year-old, Abby Kate, announced she could reach the high shelf in the pantry.

“You can?” I responded.

“Yes,” she said. “I had to get the chocolate Pop-tarts for Lily because she couldn’t reach them.”

My daughters are pals. They play together and take care of each other well.

But Lily demonstrates a competitive edge, even (and maybe especially) towards her big sister.

“Littler than” translates “lesser than” in her view, always looking up to Abby Kate.

This time she was also looking up towards a Pop-tart. She decided it was worth having, so help was worth having, too.

Even if it came from big sis.

I reflected on the moment and considered how often I pass up or miss out on things I want because I’m too timid to ask for help.

Sometimes we’ve got to reach. 
For the things we want.
And for the people who can help us get them.

Food for thought.

Maybe with a side of Pop-tart.

“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up…”

(Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)