Dear Friends,
I know.
I know how hard it is to hear of another tragic event happening in our world. I know what it’s like to be struggling with why right now. I know what it’s like to be hurting. I know what it’s like to question your Faith and your God and to wonder if there is anything kind left on this planet we call home.
I know.
There are days where it all falls on top of you and you have to be the bad guy at work or at home or with your spouse. There are days when you turn on the TV and turn it right back off again because you just can’t take the media bickering and the catastrophe of bad news.
I know.
I know that there are social media bombardments for you to pick a side, to take up arms and fight, to shout out your opinion as loud as possible so everyone can hear your outrage.
I know.
Not too long ago I struggled with these things too. I felt like I was drowning in the sea of negativity that is constantly swirling in our world. There were difficult times before Hugh’s diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes, of course, but his diagnosis was almost more than I could bear. The fact that my young son was diagnosed with such a cruel and un-forgiving disease was confirmation for me that the world was bad, and more specifically, out to get me.
I was angry. And everywhere I looked, for those first few months, I saw bad and evil and wrongs. Through my eyes blurred with tears and through the fears in my heart, I only saw the worst.
But I just couldn’t stay there. Maybe it’s the way I’m hard-wired. Maybe it’s the copious amounts of coffee I drink. Maybe I’m just goofy from lack of sleep. Or maybe, just maybe, I had to go where there is good.
My grandparents own a farm in rural Mississippi and even though my grandfather has passed away, my grandmother still lives on the farm and we visit her often. Our Mississippi family has now spread out all over the country and spans the globe, but at any given moment, there is a house full of relatives and friends spending time on the farm. There are doctors and teachers, preachers and bankers, architects, engineers, nurses, therapists, students, and young children mingling around. There are people from different races, ethnicities, and countries, people who speak several languages, people who are Baptist and Methodist and Catholic. There are people who grew up in poverty, people who grew up in privilege, people who were educated in the best institutions in the country, and people who were educated in the rural schools of the South. When I wake up in the morning, there is usually already a group walking to the small pond, someone going fishing, a deep conversation happening on the porch, and there is always, always something wonderful cooking in the kitchen.
The sky is bigger there. The food tastes better. Colors are more vibrant and the stars are endless. The smells are a mixture of pine and grass and sweet potatoes roasting in the oven. And there, right there, in the middle of nowhere, there is good.
A few months after my son, Hugh, was diagnosed of Type 1 Diabetes, we took the kids to visit in Mississippi and for the first time, I felt like I could breathe. As I looked around the kitchen table at the odd assortment of people who call each other family, I remember thinking “This. Is. Good.”
And do you know what? It didn’t matter that Hugh had been diagnosed with Diabetes. As painful and difficult as that was, we were still there, eating biscuits sticky with syrup, reading the morning paper, laughing over a story together. The goodness was there and it always will be.
For decades now, people have been loved and nourished around that kitchen table. It didn’t matter what language they spoke, what their background was, who they voted for or what country they voted in – they were all welcomed and accepted. When I think of God’s love in human form, I often think of that table with my grandmother serving food and loving generation after generation, NO MATTER WHAT.
Dear friends, listen to me closely. There is so much good in the world. Sometimes I get weepy just thinking about it. There are people sacrificing for each other. There are families saying I will love you despite our difficulties and fears. There are thousands of volunteers every day feeding the hungry or advocating for children or giving their time and money for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.
So what do you do when the negativity seems to overwhelm you? When all you see is anger and fighting? I think the answer is very simple.
Go where there is good.
A rural farmhouse in Mississippi is not the only place where there is good. Step out of your box. Go serve a meal to the homeless. Sit on the back pew of a church somewhere and listen to the words of an old hymn. Volunteer to help children with special needs. Park yourself on a back porch with friends and laugh until the sun goes down.
Go where there is good.
Visit the sick in the hospital. Offer to sing at a nursing home. Invite all of your friends and your kids’ friends over for a night around a campfire. Share a meal with your family and for heaven’s sake, TURN OFF THE TV and PUT DOWN YOUR PHONES.
Go where there is good.
Remind yourself that there is still good in the world and that it is all around. But if you still can’t see it, come with me down a country road to a place where I know it exists. We will give you biscuits and a little bit of cornbread and black-eyed peas, and a whole lot of God’s love. And that might just help you open your eyes.
Love, Sally
P.S. Wallace Stegner writes in his book Crossing to Safety of a large family – “Happily, eagerly, they expanded their circle and let us in. Professors, diplomats, editors, bureaucrats, brokers, missionaries, biologists, students, they had been most places in the world and loved no other place as they loved Battell Pond. Their loyalties were neither national nor regional nor political nor religious, but tribal.”
The farm in Mississippi is my Battell Pond and the tribe is based solely on the fact that we know we are loved. I hope you have your own Battell Pond and that you feel God’s Beautiful Love when you are there. Find your place. Go there often – but don’t stay there. Go back out and share that goodness with others. The world is so desperate for it.
Originally published on The Sacred, The South, and The Sugar.