Chapter 1: Absence 

I was doing my pre-show check backstage when I found Fred sitting alone in a curtained  corner, quietly flopping his hat back and forth. This was unusual behavior for freshman Fred,  who usually looks and acts more like a puppy-squirrel than a human. “Are you nervous, Fred?” “No, I’m not nervous.” 

“Then how are you? You don’t look like yourself.” 

“I’m more or less.” 

“What’s going on, Fred?” 

“I— I—” His face scrunched up as he began to sob. It’s funny how they can transform  from fifteen straight down to seven years old like that. “I just really wanted my dad to come  tonight. I wanted him to see me, and— he— isn’t— coming.” 

I said everything that could be said. I brought a male teacher he liked backstage to say,  “I’m so proud of you, man.” The cast picked up on his mood and sent every joke and hug they had his way. But from the moment he’d told me what was wrong, I knew that nothing we did would wipe that awful flatness out of his eyes. 

The weekend passed, and Tuesday came. Fred puppy-squirreled his way through the halls  again, curtains closed to hide his vacant backstage. 

Chapter 2: Disappointment 

One of my favorite days of the year is when I get to tell a couple of students that they  won a top writing award at regional competition. Mark was ecstatic when I told him that his  novel won. He texted his mom immediately. “I can’t wait to tell them! I thought you pulled me  into your room because I was in trouble. I actually accomplished something!” And I grinned. “You accomplished a lot, Mark. I’m so proud of you.” 

The next day, however, he slunk into my room in defeat. “I thought… I was so excited to  tell them last night that I won. I explained how important it is, how hard it was to win, how hard I worked on that novel. I worked so hard…” 

Mark was sitting at the student computer, where he had pulled up an internet game as simplistic as childhood. His index finger clicked the mouse as he spoke, furtively zapping  spaceships out of the endless, empty sky.

“I thought they would be proud of me this time,” he continued. “My dad, he just said,  ‘Huh,’ and changed the channel. He’s told me that writing is a waste of time; it won’t earn me  money. I try so hard to impress him, but he keeps telling me that I’m not good enough.” 

“Oh, Mark…” I fumbled for words for a while. How could a small, teenage-faced woman even soften the blow cast by a godlike dad? I said something anyway, gave every angle I could  think of, every comforting word I had on hand. I realized, out loud, that over half of the Writers Hall of Fame winners I’ve had shared the same basic trait: parents who don’t care, who don’t  come. 

Click. Click. Click. He kept his eyes on the screen. 

“Ms. Haas… to survive, my dad is taking a medicine that is killing him. One day I will  wake up, and he will not. I feel like I have to do something to impress him now, or I will never  have that chance again.” 

And another spaceship lost its wings. 

Chapter 3: Mystery 

Once a year, when we finish Romeo and Juliet, I turn off Ms. Frizzle mode and give the students my suicide speech, when I address the triple issues of bullying/gossiping, supporting  friends through hard times, and reaching out for help when you’re depressed. It’s a rough speech to listen to, and everyone turns pale and goes to their own darkest place, but I remind them that we’ll only spend ten minutes on such a gut-wrenching topic because we need to be reminded of  how to treat other people and what to do if we ourselves are ever in trouble.  

Peter asked me to stop the speech in the middle. His face was tight, his eyes sunken. “I’m almost done, Peter,” I said. “But you guys have to know what to do when you need  help. This isn’t about the problem; it’s about the solution.” 

The next day, Peter mentioned that after my suicide speech, he had been so depressed he’d just gone home and slept to forget it. I picked at that scab a little: “Why did it make you  depressed? What do you do to cope with sadness? Have you considered talking to one trusted  adult about the things going on in your life? I know you like Mr. Fields.” 

But he bottled and burrowed, bottled and burrowed. “I don’t go personal. I don’t do that.  I will weep in front of this class, but I won’t talk to anyone.” I talked up Mr. Fields and how  healthy it would be for Peter to talk to a male teacher sometime about the things that bother him. 

And then, for all he’d announced that he would never tell, he started telling me just the edges of things. “One more year. Then I am 18, and I will leave that house and never go back.  That’s all. You don’t know what it’s like. If you push back… he just… so I don’t. I shut up and  bury everything. Why do you think I read so much?” 

“Is there anywhere you can go sometimes, even for an hour or so, to get a break?”

“No, you don’t know— I lived in a tent for six months; I lived in a bathtub for two years,  but— but you don’t know— I don’t talk about it. One more year. Can we get back to homework  now?” He picked up his pencil, dropped his head, and wrote the first essay of the year I didn’t have to beg and plead with him to write. 

I don’t know. He was right: I don’t know. 

Chapter 4: Redemption 

“I’m sorry, but I have little Jesse this weekend,” Mr. Fields said. Again. 

The English department of Stockton High School is its own mini-family and always has been. It’s a club you can never leave, with former members constantly coming to help run English events or just hang out every couple months. We like each other enough to spend time together outside of school when we can, but Fields’ schedule is a bit more rigid than anyone else’s, because we all know what a night or weekend with little Jesse means: it is sacred, and we do not  touch it. 

We might be a mini-family, but little Jesse is The Family. 

Fields grew up without a dad, and that’s why his own son is the most important person in  his world. That’s why he keeps his classroom door cracked open and one student or another is  always wiggling his way in. It’s why he lived the dream that many of us teachers only joke  about, fostering a student until she flew away to college— so that no one else ever has to grow  up without a dad. 

He was my teacher mentor from the time I entered education, and he was the one who coached me on how to talk to students when the literature starts to hit home. At first, I felt professionally beholden to keep the focus on commas and quotations, but he encouraged me to  trust my instincts and drop everything whenever a heart peeked out of its shell. He gave me  permission to blur the lines between teacher and honorary aunt. And he sits with me, his head ducked in shared sadness, every time I rush into his room and perch on a student desk, needing to grieve a teenage tragedy I just couldn’t mend. 

It was lucky that he was at the play the night that Fred broke down. I opened the  backstage door and led him in, my eyes scanning the black walls for little Fred. But the second Fields entered the room, Bobby ran toward him and jumped on top of him, wrapping both his arms and his legs around Fields in a comical man-crush hug. “Fiiieeldds!” the students all whisper-yelled, and he was swarmed. I could barely get their attention to ask them where Fred had crawled off to. I had brought Mr. Fields backstage to cheer up one little guy, but it looked like I’d killed about twenty birds with one stone. 

And as I watched this fatherless man fill the whole backstage with his shoulders, I knew that cycles can break. 

Article written for Missouri Baptist Children’s Home

Maybe it was naïve of Molly to think love could heal the raging wounds of trauma and abuse. Maybe in the real world of heartbreak and blunt statistics, there weren’t any happy endings for the foster kids she wanted to help. But Molly was going to give love a try anyway.

She’d believed in love all four years of college while she plugged away at a degree in social work, and she kept on believing as she looked for meaningful work she could jump straight into without years of experience. Then a friend told her about Missouri Baptist Children’s Home. Molly always wanted to be a caseworker for cute little kids, but something about the Transitional Living Program caught her heart. If children in foster care mattered, so did the young adults they became. The confusing work of living with gritty teenagers wouldn’t make for a beautiful postcard, but Molly’s adventurous side was thrilled at the challenge.

The first resident she saw when she walked in was Lauren. Gold bracelets up one arm and scars up the other, Lauren rolled her eyes at Molly’s attempts at getting-know-you questions. At 16, Lauren had already cycled through several residential facilities, hospitals, and foster care families. She knew all about adults who started out sweetly promising they cared, and she wanted nothing to do with fake niceness.

Lauren broke every rule she came across, flipping back and forth between angry accusations and panic attacks. She was constantly fleeing to the safety of her room, too overwhelmed to play a board game with the other girls.

Molly felt a little out of her league, but everywhere she turned in the New Testament, she rediscovered Jesus’ simple command to love. She didn’t have a doctorate in psychology—but she did have the Holy Spirit living inside her. That would have to be enough.

So she kept drawing from the love of Jesus even when her own patience wore thin, using strategies she’d learned in her Trauma Based Relational Intervention training to build a connection with Lauren. Now and then, she’d gently mention a concern, but mostly she looked for strengths and small accomplishments she could praise to reinforce positive behavior. The more Molly encouraged Lauren, the more Lauren’s self-hatred gave way to self-acceptance. God loved her, and for the first time, she could feel that love as Molly and the MBCH staff gave her second, fourth, and sixteenth chances. Even after her outbursts, they still genuinely cared, and Lauren didn’t know what to do with a love like that.

Molly couldn’t tell you when it happened—but with time, Lauren had become softer and brighter, alight with hope. Instead of hiding from the world or trying to scream it away, she giggled through movie nights with the other residents, learned to use public transit, and went shopping on her own. Molly helped her open a bank account, coached her through mock job interviews, and stood proudly in line as a customer on Lauren’s first night working at Wendy’s. And when Lauren opened her college acceptance letter, Molly was the first person she showed. Once again, she was screaming, her bracelets cutting into Molly’s back as Lauren squeezed her tight and laughed and cried.

Lauren moved out the following August, but Molly didn’t. She was happiest in the constant chatter and craziness of young adults bursting like firecrackers around her all day long. Someday, she knew these years would become a few lines on her resume about how you could only change the world one heart at a time—but right now, this was where she belonged. She had started out on a mission to help foster teens find their place in the world and their home in Jesus. She never knew she’d be finding her home here among them, too. 

Love wasn’t just a ministry buzzword for Molly; it had become everything she’d ever wanted.

Article written for Baptist Homes

Each of the residents at Baptist Homes – Adrian has a story to tell, a list of homes that he or she has lived in before moving here. And, strangely enough, so do the windows.

When Delores Kube found out that Baptist Homes needed stained glass windows, she felt like she’d stumbled upon a win-win opportunity. She owned a pair of stained glass windows that she’d been longing to find a meaningful home for, since they represented one of the sweetest chapters of her life and ministry. 

The story of these particular windows began sometime around 1910, when Ervay Street Baptist Church was first built in downtown Dallas. In 1958, the congregation moved to a new building, and the old building was converted into the Ervay Baptist Center as a part of the Home Mission Board’s Department of Christian Social Ministries. 

Soon, three women missionaries were assigned to the Ervay Baptist Center: Delores Kube, Joan Frisbee, and Dolly Roby. The mission board turned some of the upstairs Sunday school classrooms into apartments for them. From 1961 to 1973, Delores came home every day to an old church, climbed the steps up to the choir loft, and slipped past the organ pipes into her apartment. In her bedroom, in her bathroom, and in her kitchen, she slept and cooked, rested and worked under the light of the stained glass windows.

Living in a church could only last so long. Eventually, the three women moved out into a house of their own—but they took two windows with them. For some reason no one can quite remember, the board decided to replace the stained glass with something more modern, and most of the windows were given away. 

That left two for the missionaries to hang in their new home, a little sliver of the sanctuary tucked in with all their ordinary lamps and dishes. Joan often joked that she wished they had the window that said “Men’s Bible Class” instead. And as the years ticked by, little else changed. The women still served through Ervay Baptist Center almost every day. Love was hard, and God’s promises steady, and the Word as sharp and clear as glass.

All three missionaries retired in 2004 and moved to Dolly’s hometown of Adrian, where they had a house built on her family’s property. The windows more or less retired then, too; no one could find a way to install them in the new house. Dolly’s sister, Lala, tucked them under her bed for protection. It felt like a waste of precious beauty. The light was quiet for a while, but it stayed safe, waiting for the day when it could come out for an encore.

Enter Ron Pence. When the women read his vision for a small worship chapel at the Adrian campus, they felt like he had given them a gift. They themselves had done ministry at Baptist Homes – Adrian before; these were people they’d come to know and treasure. “God, this is it,” Delores said. She had finally found a way to get those windows back in ministry, serving the Lord and blessing His people.

“I think even if we had one hanging in our home,” Delores said, “we would’ve probably looked at each other and said, you know, we love these windows. But what an opportunity to share the enjoyment, the meaning, and the inspiration with so many others through the years to come.”

Someday, Delores, Joan, and Dolly could see themselves potentially living at Baptist Homes Adrian. For now, a different set of stained glass windows helps them feel right at home in the church they attend in Altona. They know firsthand how life-giving all this splendor of color and light can be, how it eases the soul into worship. And so they’re eager to share their stained glass windows—their legacy—where they can cast light onto others, multiplying every sunbeam into praise.

“What better place for 100-year-old windows to be than in a nursing home?” Delores chuckled. She knows these windows are more than mere art. They are rainbow reminders of God’s faithfulness, His promises and peace. And so she gives away one of her most valued possessions quickly and with gladness. All of them are still missionaries, after all—Delores, Joan, Dolly, the windows—because love itself never really retires.

Kyle is just on the skinny side of fifteen, all kindness and a quick smile. He blazes intensity, beautifully lost within whatever story we’re reading; he’s the type who can’t help but yell at any movie screen. And his cheeks splotch not pink but gosh-darn red when someone praises him, when I ask him a question, when he laughs.

So today when he told me what happened, the tops of my ears burned gosh-darn red with anger. It wasn’t teenage bullies but adults who ripped everything he loved away in a moment, with no explanation that I could understand. And I play the onlooker, every time: powerless. My job is to watch their faces crumble, to shake my helpless fist on their behalf.

I preached to him resiliency. “This is not over. You are going to do everything you can to get this back next year, and in the meantime, you are not going to give up, you hear me? You have the opportunity the other kids don’t have: to overcome one more obstacle, to hold onto hope and not let your emotions go in spite of this.”

He squared his jaw and nodded slowly. His cheeks glowed, and so did his eyes. Yes. He was on board. He was still sad, but his soul was ten times bigger than the back-row boys ever could have guessed when he marched out of the room to grapple with the whole mean world again.

And just as Kyle left me, someone stepped on my own heart. Just a little bit— but maybe it hurt so much this time because of the pattern, the constant dripping that’s added up. I let myself stew, gnash against the injustice, consider reciprocating just this once. I read Psalm 37, and then I doubted it, and I sang with Jon Foreman, “Will justice ever find you? Do the wicked never lose?” This I cannot, will not ever understand: how people can spit such meanness for no discernible reason, how the sky itself can bend against the sweetest child.

But Kyle and I are not like them, and we will not be like them.

This is the difference: we know how to overcome, how to cry and then keep singing courage in the face of every closed door. We will feel the bitterness starting to crust over our hearts, the cynicism smoking out the fire in our eyes— and then we will beat our own hearts soft again until we find the mercy that makes us strong. We are going to keep running, and they cannot catch us, they cannot catch us, they cannot catch our blazing red.