What turned my head was the sign for Aunt Beaut’s pan-fried chicken.
Why is it when God wants to get my attention, the easiest way to do it involves chicken? My belt really is a leather fence around a chicken graveyard.
Anyway, last week we were in downtown Charlotte on vacation. And there on the corner of West Trade and Tryon Street was the King’s Kitchen. Open for lunch or dinner, the restaurant trumpets “New Local Southern Cuisine.”
They had me at “Southern.”
True, I can get fried chicken anywhere. But when was the last time you went into a restaurant that had collard greens, cream corn, and butter beans all on the menu for lunch?
So I staked the place out, and the next day my wife and I walked the block from our hotel to sample the King’s Kitchen for lunch.
I immediately knew something was different about this place when I read the quotation on the wall just inside the door [click to continue…]
How do you respond when you are told every day what a nobody you are? When the people who are supposed to be your friends and co-learners in school instead ruthlessly call you demeaning names, and you feel you have no one to talk to?
Brenda Poage gets that. And Brenda is a somebody that you need to know. Wife and mother, author and visionary, Brenda – like most of us – is who she is because of how she has responded to some painful experiences in her life.
Brenda is a LifeVestor.
Kids can be cruel, but you don’t have to explain that to Brenda. From the time she started school in her small Texas town, she was mercilessly bullied by other kids in school. Having to play academic catch-up required that Brenda attend remedial classes. And she became the brunt of some pretty mean name calling and bullying.
So when educators and parents today start quoting statistics that as many as half of all school children are bullied in some way, Brenda does more than raise her hand as “Exhibit A.” She did something about it. And that’s how Ima Nobody Becomes a Somebody was born. [click to continue…]
It’s a little hard to feel sorry for Mo, even when at times in his childhood you would have been tempted to. He was a sickly child, and his short, thin physique was no match for the other boys who were good at sports.
Mo was no geek, either. Something of a slacker in school, the truth was, book learning was way past hard for him.
But he had his looks, right?
Uh, no. Sitting atop his bony, wiry frame was a giant schnoz. The dude was seven shades of ugly. [click to continue…]
You never knew Lillie Edwards. I hardly did either, except for a brief two-week period years ago. But Lillie will always be a significant figure in my life and memory.
When I met Lillie Edwards, she was dying. I was green-green-green as a young pastor, serving in my first church in a senior role.
Lillie Edwards would be my first funeral service. But she taught me some things about living, and about dying, before our paths parted. [click to continue…]
I want to tell you how a man invested in his future, and in mine. It happened nearly 15 years ago. He was in West Texas, I was in Memphis. Limited by distance, I was forced to have The Talk with him on the phone. It was a talk I dreaded.
This man was my father-in-law.
I had brought a lot of pain into his life and his family. And to say they were hurt and angry about it is putting it mildly.
I knew that in order to move on in a healing process in my life, I had to face up to some pretty serious mistakes – sins – and he and his family were the victims of a lot of that. I knew that regardless of what I would hear or how he would respond, I had to have The Talk.
Did I mention that I dreaded making that call? [click to continue…]
I know about as much about car transmissions as I do about clouds (which for some reason I never studied in school). I know it makes the car go, and if it ain’t working, your car won’t be going anywhere. At least, not in the manner to which you’re accustomed.
Now since I’m completely clueless, I’m also at the mercy of somebody who isn’t if something goes wrong with my car-goer. So when I need transmission service, that’s when I call the folks at A-1 Transmission.
(Ewww. Does this sound like a commercial or what?)
Seriously, this isn’t about transmission service. It’s about LifeVesting. And how a little transmission shop on 34th Street invested in my life in more ways than one.
A couple of months ago my wife reported that we had something major wrong with her vehicle. Sure enough, when I drove it, it jerked badly when it finally shifted gears, and when I would stop, it took forever to downshift back to first.
Ugh, I thought. Transmission.
But I did know who to call. I had gotten good service at A-1 in the past, and so I heaved and jerked over there one afternoon to show them I had a transmission problem.
Crazy thing was, he didn’t take my word for it. Can’t imagine why.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he said, and asked for the keys.
We drove through the neighborhoods of central Lubbock and it didn’t take the expert long to arrive at a diagnosis. [click to continue…]
I hated Ann Finch.
Three times she sent me to the principal’s office, and two of those times I emerged with a butt-on-fire.
One time she made me stay after school in an Ann-imposed detention. I lied to my mother and told her I needed to stay late because of band. When she picked me up, who should be walking out of the building but Miss Finch? She tattled on me, and then it was double trouble.
Once I ended the grading period with an 89.4 average. She gave me a “B” for the quarter. One lousy stinking tenth of a point! Too bad. She wouldn’t budge.
I liked Ann Finch.
Probably for the wrong reasons, but I liked her nonetheless. She was so easy to pick on. [click to continue…]
The house was profoundly quieter now. The funeral service was a sweet combination of faith-filled worship and fitting tribute. The dozens of family members, cousin-strangers, and delightfully helpful friends and neighbors have retreated back to dock with “normal.” All that remained this evening were my dad, my sister and me.
After thank-you notes, food rearrangement, guest dish collecting and sorting, and a pause for supper, my dad decided to start the process of going through stuff. Her stuff. While my sister began looking through and sorting out her desk, he emptied her purse. Inside was what I suppose is a typical example of a 71-year-old woman’s typical daily haul. A wallet with all the ID cards, insurance and AAA whatevers, and credit cards. A wad of keys. Pills – lots of pills. Fingernail and lip stuff. A comb.
And a receipt.
“Hey,” Daddy said, looking over the receipt. “You know what? I’ll bet she bought me a Valentine card.”
That’s sure what it looked like. A loose receipt in Mama’s purse revealed the purchase of a greeting card sometime early last week or the week before. But where was it hiding?
We started looking everywhere. The desk. Files. Closets. I asked about the car. Alas, no card.
“I sure wish I could find that card,” Daddy kept saying.
Finally, my sister found it in what should have been an obvious place, just above the workspace on her desk. And sure enough, he was right. She had bought him a card that was just waiting for her signature. And here is what it says: [click to continue…]
Hanging on the wall at the Grace Clinic lab in Lubbock – addressed to people referred to as “patient.”
Now that’s refreshing. To a group of people (and it was a huge group on this day, smack in the middle of flu season) who would probably rather be anywhere else and had precious little time, somebody noticed – and planned to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The message: We recognize you have a life outside what it is we do here.
What if we reapplied that idea to other common experiences? Imagine the signs you may see that reflect tiny investments in your life, or the lives of others.
Hanging in a coffee shop: [click to continue…]
“Hi-ya Ang.”
I hate it when people call me that. Feels like Mayberry somehow, and only two people have ever gotten away with it. Lacey Parker was one of ‘em.
Lacey was a nut job at times. The whole (short) time I knew her, it was obvious she saw through a different set of lenses. Or maybe lived on a completely different planet. [click to continue…]
What turned my head was the sign for Aunt Beaut’s pan-fried chicken. 
