Writing – The Tousled Apostle

What’s the Value in That?

June 14, 2018June 18, 2018 jamieahughesLeave a comment

Monday, I watched this 60-second documentary about dogs and went spiraling into an existential crisis of sorts.

It wasn’t the senior dogs that nearly had me in tears, though their sweet graying faces were touching. It was the moment the dogs were taken to an assisted living facility. “Most of these people are lonely,” says Kim Skarritt, the founder of Silver Muzzle, via voiceover as senior citizens pet dogs and smile broadly at the camera.

I’ve been struggling to find balance in my life as of late. Being a mother has a way of sucking up all the spare time in a day, making it difficult for a woman to pursue her personal goals and dreams. I’ve wanted to spend more time writing essays and stories of my own, but with a full-time job and a family to take care of, that can be a little dicey. Every hour I spend has to come from somewhere else, so I typically end up waiting until the end of the day (when I’m already drained). That means I’m either losing sleep or precious hours with my sweet husband, whose company I very much enjoy, but I keep on doing it because—dadgummit—writing is my great purpose in this life!

And then I watch that video and think about homeless animals and lonely senior citizens, both populations shoved to the margins, things we’d rather not think about. Then there is the current immigration crisis to consider, the one that is forcibly separating families at the border and sending children to detention centers. I can’t forget that there’s racial injustice everywhere or the fact that white people are falling down rabbit holes of hatred. On any given day, there are 428,000 children in foster care. The suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have drawn my attention to the fact that suicide is on the rise in the United States. In fact, it has risen nearly thirty percent since 1999. Oh, and opioid abuse has reached epidemic status.

I haven’t done a singlething to combat any of this suffering. But, hey, at least I wrote that short story I’ve been noodling on, right? Yay for me!

In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus tells his disciples that when the final judgment comes, “the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:34-40).

There ain’t word one in there about the arts, folks. I was bored to tears, and you entertained me with your dazzling prose. Not even in The Message version.

That is what it means to be about the Father’s business, I think. That’s what I should be doing. People young and old give up and die every day because they think no one cares about them. I could reach out and tell them otherwise. People everywhere are in need of food and clean water, access to better education and childcare. I could help them get it. People are strangers, even to their neighbors, and social isolation is crippling us emotionally. I could shut this laptop and walk down my street. What is an essay—even one that’s well-crafted—in the face of all that? If I throw the last 5,000 words I’ve written into the abyss, what would it change? Probably nothing. I tell you what—sometimes writing feels as pointless to me as chopping decorative pillows.

However, writers are fond of defending their craft as absolutely necessary to the human condition. Ernest Hemmingway said it requires one to “sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” From someone who cut language pretty close to the bone, that’s a bit melodramatic. Neil Gaiman said, “Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing day nothing else matters.” Really, Neil? Nothing else? According to Maya Angelou, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I can think of a few.

Books are friends, portals into the soul, journeys taken on magic carpets, a way of saying what cannot be said any other way. Yeah, we like to pile on and puff it up for looks. Phillip Pullman believes that, “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” And I’ll stop with that, because I can get behind this sentiment—even if it was said by a self-proclaimed “religious atheist.”

Hell, even the fact I can sit here and kvetch about all this on my Mac from the comfort of my middle-class home (with Solomon Burke on my record player for goodness sake) requires me to admit the staggering amount of white privilege I enjoy—yet another issue in need of a solution.

So, yes, it’s safe to say that I’m questioning a great deal about my “passion” as of late. Writing to inform, to persuade, and to educate—I’m feeling pretty okay about that—but beyond those goals (none of which I would dare label as “noble”) I’m of two minds. Can I continue to spend time writing in a world where my cat has it better than a lot of people? Can I, in good conscience, spend hours working on an essay when I could be helping ESL students better express themselves?

Nathalie Sarraute said “the act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation.” Those are two words a lot of people don’t know the meaning of, much less could ever hope to experience. And what are catharsis and liberation worth when there are millions of people struggling to keep it together or feed a family on a few bucks a day? I don’t think there’s much catharsis to be had in a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese, but I could be wrong.

Finally, dear reader (and if you’ve managed to hang on this long, I salute you), all this navel-gazing is not meant to heap hot coals on your head. My judgment extends no further than the rather roomy confines of my own flesh and bone. This uncertainty is mine and no one else’s, and this post is only a marker for those who, like me, are finding their way.

What We Leave Behind

September 17, 2016September 19, 2016 jamieahughes3 Comments

Yesterday, I was added as a contributor over at The Mighty, a website that publishes “real stories by real people facing real challenges.” It’s an amazingly honest and encouraging place for people who have disabilities, chronic/rare diseases, or mental illnesses. As someone who has one of the many conditions listed on their site (Multiple Sclerosis or MS), I was thrilled to be able to add my voice to their robust community. If you’d like to read them, please click here.

Seeing my story on their page and reading those of other people whose lives have been impacted by MS, I started thinking about the value of words. Ever since I was little, I’ve always loved working with them, stacking them end to end to make a beautiful sentence or poetic phrase. I love the way certain words sound (Go ahead and say “mellifluous” out loud and fail to enjoy it. I dare you.) And even after 30+ years of using them, I’m still amazed at the way they can morph from noun to adjective (novel), adjective to verb (stiff), verb to noun (grid).

But I didn’t come by this lifelong obsession naturally. Many of my family members are readers, some more voracious than others. But only a few are writers, and most of them are in my generation. I have a few letters and handwritten notes written from loved ones who have passed, each of which I treasure, but there are entire branches on my family tree that have died without leaving a single syllable behind.

I have sermon notes and a short letter from my great uncle James.

A letter from my paternal grandmother, Betty Lou Hill, given to me just weeks before she died.

I even have a postcard and a book inscription from Myrl Rhine Mueller, a lady in my hometown who published a book about the history of Greene County. When I was in third grade, I lugged a boom box to her little house, which was down the street from my grandparents’ and conducted an interview with her for a history project.

But there are no diaries, no journals, and no handwritten notes in the margins of beloved books.

It’s an absence I’m feeling more acutely these days as members on both sides of my family pass away. I can no longer ask Papaw, my maternal grandfather, his thoughts on a current event or hear about the things he had a passion for. He loved to sing. I know that for certain, but I don’t know how singing made him feel or why he enjoyed it so much.

He played a small role in the Civil Rights movement too, but no matter how many questions I ask or how deeply I dig, I’ll never know the entire story.

In the early 1960s, he was the assistant manager of an S.H. Kress & Co. in Memphis, Tennessee. For many weeks in the late summer and early fall, young black students would stage sit-ins at the Curly-Q Luncheonette inside the store. He was given strict orders that if one happened on his watch, he should immediately stop service and turn off the lights. Some time after this, the protesters would get up and leave. It was always peaceful, always respectful, but every time Papaw flipped those lights, he felt pitiful. He was a boy from rural Arkansas—a farmer’s son, dirt poor in every sense of the word—and some of his closest friends were black. He believed in their cause, but because he had a wife and two young daughters at home, he had to toe the company line and keep the job. But he did the one thing he could do: he apologized to each of them as they walked out.

It’s not a big story of great sacrifice or drama, but it’s his. That makes it mine too in some small way, and I love it, despite the fact it’s secondhand and shaggy around the edges.

Our two kids, who we are adopting from the foster care system, already have a lot of holes in their stories. Several members of their birth families were also adopted or given up for adoption, so there’s no way of knowing exactly where they came from, who they favor in looks and temperament, who their “people” are. There’s nothing I can do about that, but I do want to leave them a legacy, a heritage of sorts.

There will be notes in my favorite books, so they’ll know why I loved them. There will be journals, short stories, poems, essays, and articles. I want to leave behind an ocean of words for them to swim in—to find me and perhaps, in some small way, to find themselves.

Our Level Best

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016 jamieahughesLeave a comment

It’s always a treat when I get to write about my family for the magazine. I’ve been honored to tell stories about a great date, memories, and even my testimony in previous issues. And in July/August, it’s all about my husband and his penchant for perfectly straight pictures.

It goes a little something like this….

Image courtesy of blog.forever.com. — Image courtesy of blog.forever.com

When my husband and I married 16 years ago, we came from very different backgrounds. He’d spent most of his life in the same home, his surroundings largely unchanged. I, on the other hand, am the daughter of a retail manager and—like the children of military men—was used to putting my things in a box every two years. Moving on so my father could move up.

By the 12th new address, my family could strip a house, pack a truck, and do a final clean and patch job in under 10 hours. We were never sure if this was something we should be proud of or sorry for. And when we got to the rented house in the next town, we’d unload in much the same way—placing furniture and slapping pictures on walls at a pace that would make a NASCAR pit crew jealous.

But just because the work was done quickly didn’t mean it was done well….

Check out the rest here!

If You Can Ask Google About Loki…

March 6, 2014April 29, 2014 jamieahughes5 Comments

I’ve run across some fairly awful grammatical, spelling, and stylistic errors in my time, but most of them were made by teenagers—people (hopefully) still learning how to write well. However, thanks to meme generators, e-card makers, and other innumerable sites that allow people to create their own images, we’re now caught up in a tsunami of awful writing. And the worst part is, no one seems to notice. How do I know? Because they create and share the stuff without a second thought. Take this one for instance.

Screen Shot 2014-03-05 at 7.54.12 AM — **Images can be enlarged by clicking on them.**

Someone tagged me in this one on Facebook because I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan, and while I appreciate the sentiment, I can’t get over the fact there are two errors in this card. First off, “that” is the incorrect relative pronoun; it’s typically used for objects, animals, things, and groups. For instance, you could say, “The bees that stung me are in a hive up that tree.” Girls who love baseball (in addition to being awesome) are most definitely not objects. Hence, “who” is the correct relative pronoun in this case.

There is also a glaring run-on sentence that could be fixed by placing comma right in front of the “and.” Brother, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve added one of those to a sentence for someone, I could pay to house Mark Harmon in a manor on the English moors and make him pretend to be Mr. Rochester for my literary amusement.

And then there’s this one that makes me despair because it’s a witty observation ruined by a single incorrect letter.

A “suicide pack”? Seriously? It would have taken two seconds to check the many meanings of “pack,” none of which is “an agreement, covenant, or compact.”

I’ve taught English for more than a decade. I know the English language can be an aggressive, hairy she-beast sometimes. It is unwieldy and hard to train, but the Internet has made it so much easier to prevent errors like this one. Back in the 80s when I was wee, I used to think the phrase was “for all intensive purposes,” and I was roundly chastised by a teacher (in front of the entire class) for writing it that way.

Today, I would simply look it up on the good ole’ world wide web, correct my mistake in the privacy of my own home, and save myself the public shaming. It also would’ve saved Mrs. Wilcox from an afternoon spent wiping up a bottle of liquid soap off the bathroom floor. (Hey, she brought it on herself. I just worked out my feelings with the tools that were available to me. Don’t judge.)

There are teeny tiny errors that make exactness impossible….

Which owl trusts the cat? We’ll never know. (My money’s on the one to its right. He looks pretty content with the state of the world.)

And there are enormous errors that make a sentence’s true meaning completely indiscernible.

The way this sign reads, the only person who can hope to take a leak in this facility must be disabled, elderly, pregnant, and a child. I could see someone being elderly and disabled. That’s easy peezie, lemon squeezie. Disabled and pregnant? Sure, that’s plausible. Elderly and pregnant? Hey, it happened to Sarah. But the only person I know who could combine “elderly” and “child” is Benjamin Button, and even he couldn’t be both at once. So while the owners of this store are very excited about you shopping with them (hence the “THANK YOU” written in all caps), the bathroom is verboten to all patrons, even those who meet some of the qualifications. We all know what they meant, but that’s not what they said.

And then there are errors that just make me wonder what the heck is going on with the public schools these days.

People with a limp-wristed grasp of grammar always claim, “I know it’s correct because it sounds right to my ear.” I hate to break it to you, but your ear is only as good as the stuff it hears. So if you’re surrounded by yutzes “that don’t talk good,” chances are you aren’t going to either. Your ear is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

I know verb tenses can be treacherous, like staircases in Europe, but the correct one is easy to discover. And, let’s face it, “I would have came” is as awkward on the ears as a rousing chorus of “Let It Go” performed by precocious children. “I would have come,” on the other hand, is pure bliss, the auditory equivalent to a glass of ’47 Cheval Blanc. Besides, why would you trust a person who spells wisdom with a Z?

If people can ask pressing questions like “Why does everyone I know like ‘The Walking Dead,'” surely, they can ask “What does suicide pack mean” and discover their word choice is flawed. So simple. And it would make the world (at least my corner of it) a little better.

But I’m totally with the people who asked Google about Loki. I can’t figure out why the sight of Tom Hiddleston drives some women to self-immolation. Seriously, he looks like he should be playing D&D in his parents’ basement and working at Sbarro.

I don’t even know if Google’s algorithms can solve this mystery.

fans-went-wild-when-tom-hiddleston-showed-up-as-avengers-villain-loki-at-comic-con — Shhhhhh….it’s a secret.

What do you think? Is good grammar dead and gone, or can it make a comeback? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the sad state of American English. However, if there’s an error in this blog, don’t point it out. Keep that little gem to yourself. 🙂

Shared Dish, Shared Life

October 17, 2013October 17, 2013 jamieahughes3 Comments

Thanksgiving will be here before too much long . I know this not because of the falling leaves or cooling temperatures, but because the November issue of In Touch Magazine hit homes this week!

The second feature is a fun, five-part read called Memorable Meals. The goal for the piece was to feature—you guessed it—food. But not just lavish holiday feasts. We wanted our writers to tell us the stories in which food played a part, and we got a wide variety. Seriously, everything from roasted goat served in the Sahara to a nuked hamburger shared in a prison visiting center.

And if this special feature wasn’t special enough, we decided to kick it up a notch and add an audio component. Each piece was recorded in the In Touch audio suites, some by the authors themselves and others by members of the In Touch Ministries’ staff. The feature as a whole can be seen (and heard) here. And if you want to suffer through me reading the text below, feel free to click here.

Two things I learned through creating this short piece. Writing about food is always fun, and listening to a recording of yourself is pure torture. 🙂

However, I’d love to hear your stories. What’s your favorite memory involving food?

Also, after you take a listen to the stories on our website, I’d love to hear your feedback. Is this something we should do more of? Let me know!

Taming the Wildebeest

September 28, 2013October 7, 2013 jamieahughes2 Comments

This week, I had the chance to attend the Richard Ellman Lecture Series at Emory University. It is a four-part event, held biannually, that features a great literary thinker. The last presenter, Margaret Atwood, was wonderful, and I expected nothing less of this year’s speaker—Paul Simon.

He gave two lectures, had a public conversation with Billy Collins, and gave a concert to bring the event to a close. I had tickets to all parts except the concert (because they went like wildfire the morning they were released). But that didn’t matter because, during the conversation, I got to hear Billy Collins read five poems and Paul Simon sing three songs—“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” “The Sound of Silence,” and “Slip Slidin’ Away.”

I also briefly met both men after their time on stage was up, which was a thrill to say the least! And, despite the long, hectic day, they were wonderful and gracious and signed the stuff I stuck in front of them.

composite_13804145197087 (1) — I got both in one day. Color me excited!

During their discussion of songwriting/poetry, they agreed that there is no moment in a piece of writing that is without consequence. As Mr. Collins said, “No line must sleep; every line must make a contribution.”

They went back and forth for the better part of an hour discussing exactly how to go about it (and how you could know you had accomplished this lofty goal.) However, the most interesting point for me was the “wildebeest note” example Mr. Simon gave.

Apparently, when he was recording “Rewrite,” a song on his 2011 album So Beautiful So What, a note at the end of a repeated phrase just sounded “wrong.” Not out of tune or a poor fit for the key, just flat out wrong. It sounded, according to him, “like a note being played on an acoustic guitar in a recording studio.”

That’s exactly what it was, but he wanted it to have an altogether different color, a distinctive depth of tone. So he said he thought on it for awhile and decided to blend that slightly pear-shaped note with a sound he had recorded on his last visit to Africa.

Photograph by ABPL/Gerald Hinde/Animals Animals—Earth Scenes. Image courtesy of National Geographic.

Yep, you guessed it….a wildebeest. There is a note in “Rewrite” that is part guitar and part wild animal, but for the life of me, I cannot hear it. Can you?

He went to amazing lengths to get a sound precisely correct. He labored over it for who knows how long until it resonated just the way he thought it should. My ears cannot suss it out, and had I not attended this lecture series, I wouldn’t even know to listen for it. But it’s there just the same.

That’s the kind of attention to detail that has to be present when we create anything, be it in the field of music, art, dance or writing. And it made me ask myself, “Am I always paying that much attention to the things I create? Have I settled for an almost-right word instead of going back to the thesaurus one more time? Have I gotten lazy with my sentence structure and gone for what’s safe instead of what’s best?”

Hearing Paul Simon tell this story made me realize that creating something from nothing is hard. I mean damned hard. But it’s also worth it. And with everything I write in the future, I’m going to ask myself if I can add a “wildebeest noise,” a certain element that makes the piece feel natural and beautiful. There will always be an element I can slyly place in my work to make it flow more organically without sounding forced. To be worth it, writing must be done to that level of painstaking detail. Always.

Can you tell me a way you’ve done it? Is there something you’ve added, some tweak you’ve made to a piece of art or a performance that made it perfect? Was it worth it even if you were the only one who knew it was there? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments. Lay it on me!

Stories Matter

July 24, 2013July 25, 2013 jamieahughes2 Comments

The author and poet Barry Lopez once said, “Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.” Over the last eight or so months, the staff of In Touch Magazine has been privileged to tell the stories of many wonderful people who God has used in a mighty way. If you haven’t already checked out our special micro-site, click on the image below and read more about them.

We were also able to work with the amazingly talented team of professionals in our ministry’s broadcast department to produce five videos, one for each month of the project. For the folks who aren’t as into words as we are, we thought these were a great way to experience the stories and hear the hearts of the people we featured. I thought I’d collect them together here as well.

The last month’s special report–The Searcher–will be coming out in September, and with it, the project comes to a close. Looking back over it now, I can see just how much I’ve grown–both as a Christian and as a writer, and I know without doubt that none of this would have been possible if God hadn’t been in it from the start. We all had to decrease so He might increase.

Bret Lott writes in his book Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian, “What I saw in [Carver’s] work was that in my own, I had to be the last one heard from in this pile of words I was arranging, and that humility was the most valuable tool I could have, because the people about whom I wanted to write mattered so very much more than the paltry desires of the writer himself. They mattered so very much more than me. My job was to get out of the way.” Here’s to hoping that with these pieces and others I’ll write, I can somehow manage to do just that—get out of the way.

***

Michael and Jessica Beates (June–The Special Needs Community)

Rhonda, Faith, and Hope Slinkosky (July–The Orphan)

Dot Hutcheson and Howard Webb (June–The Widow and Widower)

James Murray (July–The Prisoner)

Scarlett Rigsby and Truth (August–The Needy)

No Ifs, Ands, or Buts

July 16, 2013July 18, 2013 jamieahughes20 Comments

Last Saturday evening, my husband received a cryptic text message from Stan, a friend and fellow trombonist. It was something straight out of The Matrix, an indecipherable garble of letters and numbers, and Wayne decided he’d have to tease Stan about it at church the next day.

He wasted no time and shouted across the orchestra room, “Stan, what are you doing butt dialing me in the middle of the night?”

The older man’s head whipped up, a deep furrow creasing his forehead, and he snapped, “Son, you ought not talk like that in the Lord’s house.”

Wayne looked at me, panicked—like a kid who’d forgotten his one and only line in the school play. He stammered and sheepishly asked, “What did I say? ‘Butt’?”

“Worse than that,” Stan replied. “I’m not mad, but you just shouldn’t use sex talk here.”

Then it clicked in my head, and I couldn’t stop laughing. I kept on even though my gut hurt and tears filled my eyes.

“Wayne,” I said, trying to catch my breath, “he thought you meant ‘booty call.’”

A few beats later, Wayne got the joke as well. Then the only one not snickering was Stan. It was then my rather unenviable job to explain the difference between “booty call” and “butt dial” to a man thirty years my senior. It was uncomfortable to say the least, like having to tell your teacher the meaning of a dirty word when she (and you) would be better off if she remained blissfully oblivious. But, thankfully, by the time I finished, he was shaking his head and laughing too—a deep, whole body chuckle that made his shoulders shake.

Several years ago, I taught ESL classes and enjoyed many zany moments like this. And if there’s one thing those amazingly determined students taught me it’s that words matter. Especially when they have different connotations. For example, when it comes to her body, a woman would much rather be described as “voluptuous” than “chubby.” The same holds true for someone who’s good with money; I’m willing to bet “thrifty” is much preferable to “stingy.” (I wouldn’t know as I’m as prodigal as they come.)

And vocabularies, unlike currency, don’t always convert well. Consider the word “fag.” Say it in England, and a Brit will go looking for his pack of smokes. However, it’s disrespectful on this side of the pond. And you better not call your bag a “fanny pack” when you’re looking for some bob to pay for your fish and chips. It will end with you being roundly mocked.

Words also morph over time, changing their colors as easily as a chameleon does. The word “awful” once meant “full of awe” (something wonderful and amazing.) Now, it’s the last word you’d use to describe the Mona Lisa. Same goes for “manufacture.” It’s original meaning was “made by hand.” Now that term only applies to mass produced junk coming from the bowels of a factory. That’s why the sentence, “The awful manufactured lamp made my house look bright and gay” means something radically different than it did a century or so ago.

Yeah, words matter—no ifs, ands, or “butts” about it.

Music to My Ears

June 8, 2013June 19, 2013 jamieahughes8 Comments

Last week, my writing group discussed how long we’d been working at the craft, what got us started, and what keeps us going. The stories ranged from silly to serious, but there were a few things we all shared. For example, we all love reading and do so voraciously. We also started penning stories, poems, and essays at a very young age. Each one of fell in love with words, and there were moments and people who helped us discover just how winsome they truly are.

I think the same is true of other creative efforts like dance, art, music, cooking, and design. We each have a certain amount of natural talent in one or more of these areas, and it can always be developed through disciplined practice and the help of experts.

I wish my first grade teacher, Mrs. Davis, had thought about this fact. One week, she gave our class an assignment: draw a character and write a story featuring him/her. I’m sad to say I don’t have the original drawing, so I tried to re-create it using the crude art supplies in my office. Ladies and gents, I give you Miranda…

First off, I apologize for the uber creepy Jack Nicholson Joker lips, but it did the best I could. I remember her story was a simple one. She was ten years old (the age I so desperately wanted to be at the time because it had two numbers in it instead of one). She had curly brown hair and green eyes. She was a singer who loved animals and the color purple. I believe she rescued a fluffy gray and white kitten and gave it to a lonely old lady named Mrs. Kimberly who lived down the street. Yeah, she was pretty boss.

Well, when it came to drawing her, I was a little perplexed. I was the kid who liked to paint a picture with words rather than shapes and colors. But the assignment required both parts, so I–ever the diligent student–set out to complete the second part.

When we’d finished our work, we sat around Mrs. Davis in a circle, and she held our drawings up for everyone to see. She asked us questions about them, especially what we saw and liked. Finally, it was my turn, and she held up my drawing of Miranda. I held by breath, wondering what everyone would say about my magnum opus. But all she said was, “What’s wrong with this picture, class?”

Wrong? What’s wrong? I asked myself. What could possibly be wrong with it?

My classmates threw in suggestions until Mrs. Davis finally gave up and answered her own question, “It’s wrong because she doesn’t have any ears.” Everyone snickered, and she moved on to the next victim.

I wanted to defend my artistic choice, to scream, “Of course she has ears, you ninny! They’re under her hair!” But I didn’t because I was mortified.

When I saw the assignment the next day, I saw a huge red “B” etched in one corner and the same assessment scribbled in another. For an entire week, the drawing was pinned to the bulletin board at the front of our classroom—mocking me. And I think that was the moment I gave up any and all thoughts of trying my hand at art.

Granted, I never would have been naturally gifted at it. You can tell that I have no eye for proportion or form. Unlike my friend Jeff Gregory, whose doodles are works of brillance, I could never labor over something made of acrylic, pencil, or charcoal and make it beautiful. But I always wonder if Mrs. Davis’ appraisal of my drawing forever altered some part of me that was willing to take a risk with something new, something that I wasn’t necessarily skilled at but could have gotten better with over time. Horses were only things I ever practiced drawing from that point on because, like all girls, I was obsessed with them. I doodled in notebooks, but I showed what I’d drawn to no one. And no matter how much I tried, they never got better than this…

My writing, however, fared far better. Granted, I’m still far from perfect (and famous…and rich…and critically acclaimed), but I enjoy scribbling words on paper as much now as I did at the tender age of seven. More so, in fact. And while I know this mostly due to my own desire, I can’t help but think Mrs. Davis played a role in it as well.

She caught me staring at that scarlet B one day in class. She said nothing at the time, but before I left for home that afternoon, she pulled me aside and admitted, “Your story was very well done, Jamie. I liked Miranda.”

It was the first compliment for my writing I’d received from someone who was not related to me. I suddenly discovered something very interesting on one of my shoes and mumbled, “Thank you” in reply. I was embarrassed, but it wasn’t just because of the praise. All I could think was that I wished she had given it sooner.

Why? Well, that’s the what Paul Harvey would call “the rest of the story.”

The day my drawing met with criticism and laughter, I did something I’d regretted ever since. I went back to the art corner to sharpen my pencil using the silver hand crank unit we all remember so well. When I went to wedge my good old number two in the slot, I realized I’d also carried a blue crayon back there with me. Camouflaged by a half wall stacks of paper, and jars of tempura paint, I had a “wonderful, awful idea.”

In a moment of impish inspiration, I decided I would show her the extent of my ire by sharpening it too. Yeah, I went there.

I gummed up the works of that machine with my aqua-tinted rage and felt somewhat justified for having done so. But when we left for music class, I saw her carrying the sharpener to the bathroom and felt triumphant for another 2.7 seconds until I realized she’d spend most of her planning period cleaning up the mess. Then I felt putrid about it. And the compliment she gave me only made it worse.

I learned several valuable lessons from the entire experience, the most important of which is this: Words matter. Kind ones are worth the time it takes to say them. Unkind ones wound. They can change someone’s opinion about an issue or a moment in time or even make a person love or hate herself. They can inspire people to greatness or leave them defeated before they begin. Words are powerful in a way few things will ever be, and they’re ours for the using. So that means we should always use them well.

How about you all? Is there a talent you always wanted to explore but didn’t? A person you’d like to thank for encouraging you to pursue one? What do you think about words, both kind and cruel? Give me your thoughts in the comments section below.

Pure and Undefiled Religion

May 14, 2013May 15, 2013 jamieahughes3 Comments

My article in the June issue of In Touch Magazine is one for the record books. Not only is it a feature, it is also the longest piece I’ve written for the publication to date—a whopping eight pages. It was the first multi-interview piece I’ve ever done (10+), and it also included copious amounts of statistical and personal research. Because of it, I learned better interviewing skills, how to conduct an interview that’s tailored for broadcast, and how a video feature is made. I worked with amazingly talented people ranging from transcriptionists, web designers, and graphic artists to five-person a video crew. Five wonderful people were willing to share their stories with me, and I have no doubt that, through what they shared, lives will be changed. God is going to do something supernatural in the lives of at least one or two people who read this. I know because He did a number on me through the process of constructing it.

I began brainstorming for this piece back in November of 2012, and I have to say that it proved several things to me. One, nothing is impossible for God. There were several times in this process that I nearly threw up my hands and quit, but it was in those moments that God taught me something about reliance and His sufficiency. When I needed the words, they came. And when I trusted Him to provide the resources needed, He never failed to show up.

Two, people matter to God. He wants children to be in families, and He wants us to provide the homes they need. I spoke with brilliant and resilient children who have been hurt more in their short lives than I will ever experience, and I felt my heart growing in response to their stories. Also, I learned that when we grieve, our God grieves with us. I spoke to a widow of 30+ years and a widower who just lost his wife three years ago. The pain was so fresh in his heart that he cried several times during our interview, but he still said without hesitation, “God is good. He keeps providing.” That is the very definition of faith to me.

Third, though I have never wanted children before, God has impressed on my heart that it is time and that adoption is the route my husband and I will take. We’ve made some tentative first steps in that direction, and I firmly believe that I was given this assignment so God could shape and mold my heart to make that choice possible. I guarantee you that there will be MANY blogs posted on this subject in the upcoming year.

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The article has also been posted on our shiny new microsite, which can be seen in all its glory at http://www.intouch.org/missing-persons/widows-and-orphans/. There are some web exclusives there as well as the video and audio/photo slideshow that was produced as a part of the project. It’s a website designed by the wonderful team at Hampton Creative. Go look. Seriously. It looks spectacular.

It will also hit homes this week in print form, which you can read below. If you like this piece and are interested in a free subscription to our publication, please visit our subscription page and give us some info. There are three more months to go in the Missing Persons Project in addition to the two reports that have already been published as well as some exciting interviews and articles coming in the future.

All in all, this has been one of the most challenging, most humbling, and most awe-inspiring things I’ve ever had the honor to experience. God has blessed me in so many ways over the last two years since I started at In Touch Ministries, and words cannot express how I feel right now.

I’d love to hear your feedback about the article, the website, the videos, and whether or not any or all of it changed your thinking on the matter. We love hearing from our readers, so please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.