Home Is Where My People Are: The Roads That Lead Us to Where We Belong (7 page)

Two months later, Bill came home.

There are a lot of details about his recovery that I’ve never known. I don’t know why he started drinking. I don’t know when he realized that he had a problem. I don’t know why it got worse when it did. I don’t know what ultimately convinced him that he needed to stop.

But I know enough about my own brokenness to understand that
sometimes you just get to the end of your dadgum self. Those parts of our hearts and lives that try to live in perpetual exile
 
—well, eventually it’s almost like they long to be reconciled. They want to be whole.

And when Bill came home, his inner transformation was so profound that it was outwardly visible. I’ll never forget it. He and Evelyn stopped by Mama and Daddy’s the day after he completed his treatment, and he looked like a new man. I mean, I get that it might sound kind of strange for me to say that he glowed, but yes.
That.
He looked healthy, vibrant, and alive. More than anything else, I remember his eyes: clear, steady, and crystal blue. Whatever used to blur his vision was a thing of the past.

The memory of that day reminds me of Paul’s exhortation at the end of 2 Corinthians: “Brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you” (13:11,
NIV
). I didn’t know it at the time
 
—I was fifteen, after all
 
—but now I can see so clearly that as Mama and Daddy wrapped their arms around their friend of more than thirty years, as they laughed and cried and celebrated, as Bill shared what the Lord had done in his life, I witnessed Paul’s words in action. Live and in person.

The God of love and peace filled Mama and Daddy’s den that afternoon. And He was beautiful.

Bill’s recovery changed his life
 
—no doubt about it. But here’s the part that continues to preach to me even now, thirty years later: his recovery also established a redemptive legacy for his children and grandchildren. In fact, just a few weeks ago Kim texted me a picture of her daughter, Anna Clair, who was all dressed up for a Christmas dance, and I did an honest-to-goodness double take when I clicked on the picture.

Kim’s brilliant, beautiful firstborn is now fourteen
 
—the same age that her mama was when Bill went to rehab and I drove that 1978 Chevrolet Impala over to the Clarks’ with every intention of reading some psalms aloud. I stared at Anna Clair’s picture for almost a full minute, and after I marveled at how she somehow resembles Bill and Evelyn and Kim and Kim’s husband all at the same time, I was overcome by what a privilege it
has been to see redemption at work over the course of three generations, to watch a stronghold gradually loosen its grip and then disappear altogether.

I mean, I kind of thought the biggest perk of hanging out at the Clarks’ house was the unlimited supply of Reese’s, but it turns out that grace had a way bigger story to tell.

There’s an old George Jones song that always reminds me of Bill; I’m certain that if it had been around in the seventies or eighties, Bill would have added it to his record collection in the dining room console. Like so much country music, the song tells a tale of heartache and a second chance (you’ll be relieved to know that no one’s dog dies, and there’s not a single mention of tractors or trucks)
 
—and I think Bill, like so many of us, would be able to relate. Granted, Bill wouldn’t necessarily be singing to one of George Jones’s wives, but I can’t help but think there’s Someone to whom these lyrics would apply.

     
All it took was your sweet love

     
To rise above it all

     
You can build ’em strong and tall

     
But walls can fall


Oh, listen. I know with everything in me that Kim and I would have gotten such a kick out of hearing her daddy sing those words.

Granted, he might not have been able to carry a tune in a bucket.

But his song would have been more beautiful than ever before.

1. Rolling my hair with Conair Hot Sticks because VOLUME.
   
2. Watching
   Moonlighting
   .
   
3. Reading anything I could find about
   Moonlighting
   .
   
4. Putting way too much emphasis on
   Moonlighting
   .
   
5. Trying to create some serious boy drama in my life despite the fact that I didn’t actually, you know,
   date
   anyone.
   
6. Offering to say the prayer at Methodist Youth Fellowship on Sunday nights so nobody would forget that I was a good little church girl.
   
7. Wondering what all the Jesus stuff meant outside of being a good little church girl.
   
8. Riding around singing along with Amy Grant’s
   The Collection
   with my friends Elizabeth and Marion.
   
9. Believing with everything in me that no matter what problems I faced, AMY GRANT UNDERSTOOD THEM.
   
10. Choreographing ballet routines to the sound track from
    St. Elmo’s Fire
    in order to artistically convey all my Very Deep Emotions.
    
11. Stopping at the Jitney Jr. on the way home from school to buy a bag of O’Grady’s Au Gratin potato chips and a Mello Yello.
    
12. Trying to figure out why I couldn’t seem to get rid of an extra twenty pounds and never really making the whole O’Grady’s Au Gratin/Mello Yello connection.
    
13. Nodding my head a lot in sophomore year Honors Algebra II so nobody would pick up on the fact that I had no idea what was going on.
    
14. Going back to a regular math class my junior year because all that nodding I did in Honors Algebra II didn’t really help me pass any tests.
    
15. Writing excruciatingly heartfelt journal entries in which I told myself all my problems.
    
16. Watching
    SNL
    over and over with my friend Ricky and laughing until I wheezed.
    
17. Considering the possibility that Phil Collins really
    could
    see the deepest parts of my heart.
    
18. Singing along to the Violent Femmes cassette with my friend Amanda and feeling super-alternative in my Esprit sweater, Guess? jeans, and Tretorn tennis shoes.
    
19. Reading epic, hilarious notes from my friend Joni
     
    —and working
    really
    hard to respond with a note that would make her laugh just as much.
    
20. Screaming “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley”
     
    —and all the other lines from Sweeney Sisters’ medleys
     
    —with Elizabeth.
    
21. Putting on a pair of high-waisted jeans, looking in a mirror, and marveling at how flattering they were.
    
22. Living in a state of delusion about that whole “flattering high-waisted jeans” thing.
    
23. Writing superlong letters to my out-of-town buddies Meg and
    Mary Helen. (Dear kids of the twenty-first century, I realize that this concept of “writing letters” might be unfamiliar to you, but it was what we had to do to communicate with people who didn’t live in our town because there was no such thing as texting, and calling someone long-distance wasn’t terribly affordable for the teenage set.)
    
24. Staring at pretty much any passage from the Old Testament and thinking,
    Well, what’s that got to do with anything?
    
25. Perfecting my use of royal-blue mascara.
    
26. Clinging to the hope I saw in Ephesians 3:20-21
     
    —but secretly doubting if it really applied to me.
    

Yeah. I know that last one is kinda serious.

But I went to college with some real-live questions, y’all.

And part of me kept hoping that Amy Grant would show up to answer them.

I
HADN’T BEEN
at college very long at all when I decided that the keys to a successful freshman year were really quite simple: a cute dorm room, access to good fried chicken, and a tan.

I know. You’re thinking,
Gosh, that all sounds a little superficial.

And you are so right about that.

But the bigger pieces of the puzzle
 
—friends and school
 
—seemed to be fitting into place just fine, so I felt free to examine what could be considered a
subset
of that success criteria.

I know. You’re thinking,
But, um, isn’t the God-size piece of that puzzle the most important of all?

And you are so right about that.

But college was the first time in my whole life when nobody was looking from the choir loft to see if I was at church on Sunday mornings. So I wasn’t exactly, um,
prioritizing
my spiritual life, unless you count
my sporadic reading of Charles Swindoll’s
Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life
.

I liked to tell myself that skimming a devotional book once every two or four months was totally keeping my Jesus tank filled to overflowing.

Also:
I was a fool.

Really, when I look back on it, the cute-dorm-room thing was pretty much under control. My roommate, Amanda, and I had picked out peach-and-green comforters the summer before we left for Mississippi State, and her mama, who is a fantastic seamstress, created an adorable assortment of floral throw pillows that coordinated with the comforters. I even drove to Starkville about a month before school started so that I could STENCIL PAINT THE WALLS IN OUR DORM ROOM
 
—a clear sign that I’d read one too many of Mama’s
Country Living
magazines and maybe set some overly ambitious decorating goals.

Nonetheless, Amanda and I had a darling room (I always feel like putting a
g
on the end of that word is a complete betrayal of my Mississippi roots, but I’m gonna run with it). We managed to decorate around the giant desk that dominated the center of our living area, and we even elevated our beds so that we’d have some much-needed storage for sweaters, books, and in my case, Dr Pepper (my Diet Coke addiction wouldn’t take hold for several more years). It didn’t take long to think of our tiny shared space as home. And when I’d finish a hard day of classes (Oh, who am I kidding? I was an English major, which means that I spent the better part of each day in humanities classes, aka Let’s Talk About All of Our Feelings.), I couldn’t wait to get back to Critz 218 and walk into our little room.

The only hitch in my dorm-room giddy-up was that Amanda was a very organized and self-disciplined engineering major, and as a result she did things like “attend class regularly” and “study every afternoon” and “get plenty of rest.” My own personal academic strategy was a bit less rigorous, to say the least (please see “talking about the feelings”). And since Amanda liked to go to bed early, I developed a routine that I followed to the letter almost every night: I’d put on my pajamas, grab whatever book I was reading, make sure I had a notebook and a pen, drag our phone out in the hallway, and then sit cross-legged against the wall outside our door. I eventually
came to think of that space as my office, and if my friends wanted to find me, that was the first place they’d look.

I wrote many a letter and called many a friend while sitting in that hallway
 
—and I met a few folks too. Friends would come by with dates and study partners they’d signed into the dorm; girls from my hall would escort parents and siblings and cousins to their rooms. I connected all sorts of relational dots while I sat outside my door
 
—which girls were from the same hometown, which girl had a crush on a guy from history class, which mama was having a hard time with her baby being off at college
 
—and in a weird way, the routine of it made me feel at home.

Go figure, huh?

I’d been at State about a month when I decided that I was going to step out of my comfort zone and stay on campus during an away-game weekend. Since most students at big Southern schools make their fall travel plans based on where the football team is playing, away games are usually a good opportunity to go home. However, that particular weekend I needed to work on a paper, and I figured I had better odds of being productive if I was stuck in my dorm room instead of visiting my hometown, where I’d no doubt alternate between hanging out with my high school friends and sleeping like I was getting paid for it.

So I stayed in Starkville.

After I’d worked on my paper for a couple of hours that Friday night, I started getting restless. Amanda and I didn’t have cable in our dorm room, so other than a couple of fuzzy local channels, I couldn’t watch TV, and even though a few people on my hall had also stayed on campus that weekend, they all seemed to have plans that didn’t involve a freshman composition paper. Eventually I decided to walk to the other wing of the dorm and see if I anyone I knew was around.

To my credit, I do believe that I changed out of my Chi O nightshirt before I made my pilgrimage.

I mean, if you’re going to walk around a dorm,wearing pants is typically a solid choice.

I didn’t see a living soul until I got up to the third floor, where I noticed that a familiar-ish door was partially open. I’d talked with Elise and Tracey, the girls who lived there, on several different occasions since we were in the same sorority pledge class, but we hadn’t hung out much because, well, there were a lot of girls in our pledge class, and in the grand scheme of things, there hadn’t been that much time to get to know each other yet.

Since the door was cracked, I pushed on it as I knocked, and I immediately saw Elise making short order of a large pile of clean clothes. By the end of that year I would come to know that Elise tackles laundry like she’s working on an assembly line. All business. If you interrupt the process, you do so at your peril. But that night, as she folded towel after towel with factory-level precision, I was kind of astounded by her folding focus, and after a couple of minutes I figured out that the best way to “help” would be to have a seat on Tracey’s bed and stay out of Elise’s way. That is precisely what I did
 
—and we started to talk.

I very quickly learned three key bits of information about the semi-stranger who was folding her towels with such enthusiasm.

1. She was hilarious.
   
2. She was opinionated.
   
3. She was most hilarious when she was sharing her opinions.
   

And listen. I think it’s safe to say that in Elise’s dorm room that night, we forged a forever friendship. We laughed until we hurt
 
—until we fell over and held our sides and fought to breathe
 
—and by the time I left her room, I had a sneaking suspicion that no matter what our college years had in store for us, we’d figure out a way to laugh our way through it.

And that
 
—
that
is what brings me to fried chicken.

You’re just going to have to trust me with my unconventional transition.

Somewhere in my conversation with Elise that Friday night, we discovered our mutual affinity for fried chicken. Now, if you don’t live in the Southern part of the country, you might wonder why the whole fried chicken thing would create such a Bonding Moment, but I would venture to say that it’s one of the deepest sources of instant connection in the South.
Sure, there’s a
general
appreciation for fried chicken that runs all through the culture down here, but when you find someone else who really
loves
it, there’s so much more to explore: white meat vs. dark meat, buttermilk-soaked vs. brined, extra crispy vs. regular crust, mild seasonings vs. spicy.

(I daresay that more than a few marriages have teetered on the brink after a disagreement about extra crispy vs. regular crust. It’s a divisive issue in this part of the country.)

(I’m convinced that it’s a topic that should be covered in premarital counseling sessions.)

Anyway, Elise and I wasted no time discussing our fried chicken favorites, and when I mentioned that I really liked the fried chicken in State’s cafeteria, Elise frowned a bit and said, “Really? Because I just don’t see any way that it could top Popeyes.”

“You like Popeyes that much?” I replied.

Oh.

Bless my heart.

Just typing that makes me want to travel back in time and pat my seventeen-year-old self on the head. Because I didn’t know, y’all.
I just didn’t know.

This is probably a good time to clarify that in the central part of Mississippi where I grew up, we were undiscipled in the wonders of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen at that particular point in time. Elise, however, was from south Mississippi and therefore close enough to New Orleans to have some legitimate fried chicken sense. I’d tried Popeyes, of course; I have a pretty vivid memory of being on Canal Street with my parents after my freshman year of high school and stepping into a Popeyes at lunchtime. I thought it was good, but I didn’t really get it; I can only blame this reaction on the fact that a fourteen-year-old’s fried chicken palate is oftentimes unsophisticated and unrefined.

You might say that my fried chicken sanctification was nowhere near complete.

That’s why the Lord was so kind to send a friend like Elise for such a time as that. Because as Elise and I visited that fateful Friday night in her dorm room, I learned a lot about her; for example, she liked to call her
parents “Cindy” and “Frank,” her grandmother called her “Essie,” she had been going out with a cute boy from the Delta named Paul, and she tended to brace her arms against the nearest door/wall/bedpost/available structure when she laughed.

But more than anything else, I learned that GIRLFRIEND KNOWS HER SOME GOOD FRIED CHICKEN.

No kidding. The very next day I went to Popeyes for lunch, and I’m so relieved to tell you that my seventeen-year-old self was able to fully appreciate what my fourteen-year-old self had not. I have never been the same.

By the grace of God, I have never been the same.

Interestingly enough, Elise has since shifted her fried chicken loyalties to Church’s, but fortunately our friendship hasn’t suffered for one second despite the difference in our fried chicken preferences.

There’s no need to get bogged down in matters of Christian liberty, now is there?

So with the fried chicken part of the college equation settled (and, just for the record, it was settled definitively by the two-piece all-white Popeyes dinner, spicy, with a side of red beans and rice and a Dr Pepper), that only left one more freshman-year objective on the personal front: a tan.

It’s probably important to point out that the sun and I have a long and complex history. From my perspective, a giant part of that history is that THE SUN HATES ME, but that might not be entirely fair. I’ve just had a lot of really bad sunburns over the course of my life
 
—most accidental, some the result of pure-dee stupidity
 
—so any situation where I’m actually
in
the sun tends to feel like it’s fraught with peril and angst. It’s better now that I’m older and have come to terms that I cannot walk outside my house unless I’m wearing a sunscreen with SPF in the double digits, but back in my college days, the sun and I had not yet made our peace with each other.