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.

Article written for Missouri Baptist Children’s Home

While the child they loved set his own heart ablaze, Kyle and Amanda were not afraid. 

Adoption always sounds sweet from the outside. No one tells you about the children who don’t act grateful, blasting their trauma across your living room in a rage of defiance and broken picture frames. At the age of nine, Liam had already found two families who offered him forever—and then brought forever to a sudden end.

It’s easy to judge those families when your only experience of foster care and adoption has been syrupy memes on social media. The movies make adoption look straightforward, if not easy. In the real world, both families loved Liam enough to grit their teeth through his storm, but they didn’t feel equipped to help him process his trauma in healthy ways and gain better functioning skills. It was time to try something else. 

That’s when Liam made his way into the care of Missouri Baptist Children’s Home (MBCH). We train foster parents to jumpstart the process of healing through the Treatment Family Care (TFC) program. The goal is always long-term placement, ideally reuniting the child with parents or relatives. If parental rights have been terminated, adoption becomes the next-best outcome. 

In the meantime, TFC uses foster care to help kids gain hope and practice constructive behaviors so that when the doors open for permanent placement, they feel confident enough to stroll inside and claim a chair at the dinner table.

All TFC foster parents complete state-required training as well as our Trust-Based Relational Intervention training, which coaches parents to respond to trauma with connection, empowerment, and correction. MBCH provides each family with 24/7 support from a TFC specialist, who meets with TFC families in their home at least once a week.

TFC parents understand that with every child, they’re facing uncharted terrain. Even though no clear map exists, their training serves as a compass helping them feel their way forward as they invite kids into the risk of relationship. And whenever exhaustion makes them shake, their TFC specialist is right beside them with the support they need to take one more step for one more day.

Before Liam connected with TFC, the only way he knew to protect himself was by striking first, before anyone else could. He stole, broke things, and hurt himself and others. The neglect and physical abuse that had dragged its claws across his past didn’t let go when he moved roofs. He acted out abuse against himself—all he’d ever known—and chased his own pain into a hospital bed, surrounded by the same sirens and beeping that had played all his life as lullabies.

Kyle and Amanda helped him process mixed feelings of loss and prepared him for the idea of calling someone else Mom and Dad. When Liam’s emotions overwhelmed him, they used strategies they’d learned through TFC to help him reroute anger into better responses. They knew to calmly wait through the worst of the thunder before trying to engage in a conversation. They understood when to ask key questions versus when to sit beside and not have to know. Of course, all they could offer most days were their best guesses; this kind of healing looked more like the Oregon Trail than a straight-shot highway. Whatever color the weather turned that day, they simply kept their direction and plodded on.

When the time came for Liam to meet his new parents, he was ready. Kyle and Amanda tagged along on visits so he’d feel safe. By now, Liam had the emotional capacity to form a positive attachment, setting the whole family up for the kind of closeness you can’t just wish into existence.

One day, Kyle and Amanda pulled into the garage, took a deep breath, and walked into a house that had found a new silence. Liam wasn’t coming home anymore. He was home, of course, unpacking his t-shirts into a bedroom that would start to feel normal in a couple of weeks. He was stable enough to be off medication. These days, he used his words to talk out big feelings and resisted the behaviors that used to define him. 

Many foster parents don’t have the satisfaction of a happy ending. Kyle and Amanda felt privileged to know their boy was growing in the right direction. Still, the quiet that filled up their kitchen was a strange thing. Some hard nights, before, it had been all they’d wanted, but now the peace was making them restless.

Every week after that, they met up with Liam and his parents, and he told them his adventures and frustrations. They’d take pictures together with silly filters and high five him for his grades. One afternoon a few months down the road, they would answer a call, put it on speakerphone. And before they even heard the next child’s name, Kyle and Amanda would already say yes.

The city had gone perfectly perfect at last, after all the long decades of social reforms and civil campaigns. They had solved hunger, poverty, and disease; they had smoothed out social inequality and tidied up the smears of old pollution. The people never asked one another, “How are you?” because the answer was a constant: “I am happy.” And so Sir Evolution slipped in quietly and erased their unused tear ducts, a trait no longer relevant for social survival. The mayor used it as the city’s slogan for some years: “The people who outlived tears.”

But even happiness has its hidden curse: it breeds boredom. The youths had always been happy, and their parents had always been happy, and happiness was always the same. The youths wanted to play a game of sorrow, and so they chased down the old men, the only relics from an age of inconsistencies and dripping heartache, and did their best to make them cry. They jeered at the men and mocked them from street to street, calling out all the worst words they knew, hunching over in exaggerated age. The old men mostly grouched back at them; one even laughed. But none of them cried.

So the youths pushed further to break the old men. They spread gossip about the men through all the local pubs and housewives; they whizzed stones to sting the men’s exposed arms. And every time the smallest old man laughed at them good-naturedly or cheerfully whistled away. Soon they found themselves centering around him, though he would clearly be the hardest to hurt, perhaps from the youthful cruelty of attacking that which is most innocent, perhaps for no more reason than because he intrigued them with his triangle grin and ready jokes. They shadowed him from his flat to the dim Italian café where he played long nights of poker, always jeering and hissing and pulling at his clothes. They broke into his flat, stole his picture albums, and smashed the china figurines that lined his windows. But the old man never cried. Sometimes he sighed and splayed his fingers in a shrug. Often he tried to reason with the children, either firmly or gently rebuking them for their disrespect. He never quite lost his smile; even when he scolded them, it lingered in a dimple tucked caddy-corner to his chin. 

The smartest boy began asking around town until he learned the name of the old man’s wife, Helena, buried for twelve years now. They pressed with their clumsy thumbs on that wound as well, and the old man grew silent, his regular chuckles finally stilled, but it was a solemn sweetness rather than a rushing pain that claimed him. “My Helena,” he murmured, “the finest of all my memories.” And the dimple went on taunting the youths from the side of his face, begging to be put out. More than one boy felt a dark thought squeeze its fingers tight around his mind then: the dimple must be extinguished, and the bruises that must first come, must come.

You will be relieved to know that they never had to beat their kind old friend; he spared them the trouble and cried all on his own one day. They found him sitting on the sidewalk in front of his flat, dribbling away for no cause they could perceive. They whooped and rushed to burst the intimacy of his grief, smearing their crude fingers in the rivulets on his cheeks so they could feel each tear’s coolness and lick off its salt. “What was it, then?” a stick-shaped girl asked him. “What made you cry?”

“You did,” he said, and they smiled in cold triumph. “You’re so foolish, and who could ever teach you? How could you ever learn? You don’t know the reverence of emotion. I was waiting for you to come to me today and walk together, and I thought about all your faces and your future— how small must it be! And I thought, perhaps joy itself will die with me.”

“He’s cracked! He’s crying because he’s cracked!” a little one giggled. “We’re the happy people, not you. We never cry.”

The old man nodded and wept afresh at her words. “My poor children, where will you find your wisdom if you never know your grief? Someday you will learn— but no, you won’t. You might have learned, once, that after the blackest years have all passed, life herself for the first time comes to you—“

But who can listen to so much vague moralizing at once? The kids, of course, couldn’t, so they shouted silly rhymes over him and made a new game of painting his tears in lines down from their own eyes. 

Thus the trend was decided: the youths tripped about town after that with water clumsily splashed on their cheeks and eyelashes. Sneaking a quick squirt out from the eyedropper when no one was looking was the easy part; faking tragedy when they wished to laugh at their own cleverness was much harder. They turned to the old man for dramatic inspiration; now that they knew his weak spot, they paraded their idiocy in front of him daily and earned back all the heartache they could hope for. Now it was only too easy to make him leak: they could mock one another in front of him, giggle endlessly at a joke that no one had told, or just thrash a dance to songs of bleating chaos. Then they would study the shapes his face made and imitate their director.

It was cool to cry, cool to stretch their faces long and sigh at intervals. They wrote dark poetry and turned the color of their shirts down. 

Always the old man was alongside them, even when they did not seek him out to pinch his heart between their black fingernails. He followed them, though he cried as much as smiled, giving them bits of wisdom and buttered bread.

And then the old man died.

Old men tend to die, you know, and the games died too without their favorite star. He died as suddenly as he had started to cry— promptly and without reason, on a hot Thursday afternoon. 

And the children, the poor children! Oh, his old poker friends were just fine, but what could tearless teenagers possibly wear to a funeral? They felt— but they knew not what they felt. They tried carrying on with their elaborate tragedies, but the shows weren’t any fun now. They tried joking instead, but no one ever laughed. They stared at one another out of dehydrated eyes. They threw rocks against brick walls and listened to them clatter to the ground. They smiled when the forecasters predicted another blue sky and the news anchor said employment was definitely up this year.

If the old man had been here to finish this story, he would have said that after many weeks of denial the youths would have wailed with anguish for their dearest friend. Some of them would have stopped eating for a while; others would nightmare themselves into insomnia. The taste would fade from all they had once loved, and their hopes would have crumbled like the clods of dirt in front of his headstone. 

Then, somewhere past the harsh turning point, one by one they would awaken. Perhaps the youngest would have skipped out first and caught a dragonfly; then a girl might have hummed a lusty concerto or two. Every stop along the city would still remind them of their loss, but each moment they would walk the taut, wild freedom of choosing either mourning or rejoicing, grief or gratitude. They would cup their hands gently around the fragile leaves of someone else’s sorrow, and they would choose— oh, choose!— to relish every flick of evening light, to laugh so well and often that their laughter formed its own language. And by the time they were grandparents, they might have lived to see Sir Evolution return the tears he stole back to the newest babies’ eyes.

None of this would ever happen, though, because the old man has died.

They remembered him in an uneasy way, but they didn’t fall apart. They just found something new after a little while. They danced. They swapped trading cards. They laughed at the kid in too-formal clothes. Nothing ever touched down deep. Nothing ever hurt too much. 

And the story ends with their grandchildren again, this time born into the world without an agonizing shriek, sometimes staring blankly at the hospital walls and sometimes not bothering to open their tiny desert eyes. The grandparents leaned forward into the tension, waiting for the doctors to check while the new mothers cried, “Are they stillborn? Can you tell if they’re alive?”

Article written for Baptist Homes

Sometimes, God changes lives through missionaries blazing gospel trails through the cold unknown. He’s been known to restore hearts, minds, and bodies through teachers and nurses, all the usual saints. But then there are the ordinary folks. 

Bob Maple’s just a simple country guy. He was working as a maintenance director in nursing facilities, but something felt wrong about driving to the city every day. He was itching to stick closer to his farm when he saw an ad on Indeed for a maintenance director for Baptist Homes – Adrian. All he’d been hoping for was a shorter commute, and here he’d found a chance to work for the Lord.

That’s how Bob sees his job maintaining the facilities at Adrian. The background work of bringing a building up to code may not look particularly spiritual at first glance. But if something isn’t working properly, the residents suffer. “God gave me the ability to maintain these facilities, structures, and equipment,” Bob said. “This is the way I give Him glory, because through serving these residents, it’s like serving God.”

Bob never seems to stop serving, either. He single-handedly made the biggest difference during the Adrian remodel, tackling projects from painting the exterior of the Independent Living building to power washing and patching the roof to prevent leaks. When most people would have called a contractor, Bob applied his own skills and experience to install cabinetry, countertops, and sinks, saving the facility more than $10,000. 

Bob takes pride in finding ways to make buildings and systems operate more efficiently; everything should work smoothly and look beautiful. Now he’s cutting costs across all facilities in his new role as Regional Maintenance Director. He’s busy converting the maintenance systems over to a building management app called TELS, which keeps track of code requirements for state surveyors and fire marshals. Bob has seen other buildings end up with too many tags—and too many fines—after depending on the chaos of pen and paper, so he knows the importance of setting up a more reliable system that lets all workers stay on the same page with other facilities and the corporate office.

For some people, faith seems to float in the sky, just a lovely collection of spiritual words that don’t intersect with their daily lives. But Bob understands what the apostle James meant when he wrote that true faith always turns into action. He’s constantly pulling it out of his toolbelt, using faith like a hammer or a caulking gun to keep residents comfortable and safe.

In Bible times, God used servants, prisoners, and slaves. He accomplished great works even through wicked kings. He has used fishermen—and one remarkable carpenter. So when you glimpse His goodness in the humble grin of a maintenance man, you shouldn’t be too surprised.

Article written for Baptist Homes

There’s nothing more satisfying than finally pushing a puzzle piece in place after a long, long search. And there’s nothing more frustrating than finishing a puzzle you’ve worked on for quite some time, only to realize a few of the pieces are missing. An almost-masterpiece that still holds a few dark spots of absence; a mystery you can never wrap your mind around.

Yvonne Swadley loves puzzles. She loves them so much, in fact, that they don’t all fit on the shelf she bought to store them. Ten are stacked in the corner, and several others are wedged under the bed. A long search followed by satisfaction; a question that comes with a perfectly crafted answer at the end.

Yvonne knows a lot about questions. For many Christians, the truth can only be black and white: everything is perfect; everything is wonderful. For Yvonne, however, it’s okay to acknowledge both the highs and the lows, while still proclaiming that God is good.

The missing pieces in her own life puzzle still bring an ache she can’t always ignore. So she clicks together gorgeous landscapes, piece by piece, building beauty on her coffee table like a shaft of light into the darkness.

From Belief to Complete Surrender

Yvonne grew up in Clever, Missouri, about 20 miles west of Baptist Homes – Ozark. Her family raised her in the Baptist church, and she was saved at the age of 13.

As she matured into adulthood, Yvonne grew restless for a deeper encounter with Jesus, realizing that she was only going through the motions of religious observance. She knew that mere belief in God was only the beginning of the full, abundant life Jesus offered, so she made it right and devoted herself completely to Him.

It’s no wonder, then, that she married the son of the minister, who went on to spend his entire adult life serving as a Baptist minister himself. Over the years, they moved from church to church, everywhere from Conway and Fordham to Mountain Grove. They had two sons and were married for 39 years. For a while, anyway, the picture was complete.

Meanwhile, Jesus took Yvonne’s full surrender and turned it into a calling to invest in kids. She worked for Head Start for over 35 years, mostly as a teacher and eventually as a director. After retiring, she served as a foster grandparent, even as her kids gave her five wonderful grandchildren of her own.

God blessed her and cared for her at every step, and she had much to be grateful for. But life had a certain heaviness to it, too. Yvonne was aging—and she was alone.

Coming Home—All Alone

Yvonne’s husband was no longer with her, so she’d had to learn to manage on her own. Back when Baptist Homes – Ozark first opened in 1996, she thought it would be a great place to go whenever she needed it. Now she was beginning to wonder if that time was close. In 2016, she went through cancer, and in 2017 she had a knee replaced. Knowing it might take a few years to get in, Yvonne put in her application.

She’s been a resident at Baptist Homes for two years now. She likes it here; the staff is kind, and the only problem she can think of is that she doesn’t care for boiled shrimp. But otherwise, the food is great, and the staff gives her seconds of the cornbread when she asks so she can enjoy it with milk as an evening treat.

As fantastic as the food is, eating isn’t much to live for. Yvonne doesn’t get many visitors. It isn’t safe for her sister to drive anymore, since she’s been in two near wrecks, so Yvonne tells her not to come. They make do and talk on the phone all the time. The resident across the hall was recently joined by her husband, and they obviously care about each other very much.

As for Yvonne’s husband, he has simply become one more missing piece. 

Pine Cones, Beauty, and the Goodness of God

Yvonne sees beauty even in incomplete pictures. Before becoming a preacher, her husband sang in revivals. Both of her boys grew up singing, too. The younger one also played the piano, and his kids became singers just like him. She’s proud of their talent and thankful for a life filled with melody.

They aren’t the only creative ones in the family. When Yvonne isn’t reading or participating in group activities, she sews and makes crafts. She and her son planted a row of pine trees beside his house when he first moved in. That was 31 years ago. Now she cuts up pine cones collected from his yard to make Christmas wreaths. She uses nail polish to paint them, since the brush is small, and it gives them a metallic look perfect for December magic.

There’s nowhere Yvonne would rather be—except possibly for the new assisted living apartments they’ll be constructing soon on the Ozark campus. She already has her name on the list to get in, since she thinks it would be fun to get back into cooking.  

Even if she stays at the main facility, Yvonne knows she made the right choice moving to Baptist Homes. She advises anyone beginning the aging process to start thinking about what you’re going to do early, before you desperately need to make a decision. It’s important to prepare and at least get a conversation going with a facility. Filling out an application doesn’t mean you have to move right away, as you can always say you’re not ready yet. Many places, like Baptist Homes – Ozark, have a waiting list. The sooner you get your name on the list, the better. 

Faith in the Waiting

Yvonne has watched some Christians grow bitter at God over the years. Despite her own loneliness and loss, all she can say is, “God’s been good to me. I’ve been really blessed; everything’s gone well.”

Pain is hard to interpret, hard to come to grips with. Yvonne doesn’t always know what purpose God has planned for this season in her life. But even with her missing pieces, she radiates a deep, true beauty that doesn’t need any explanation. Yvonne Swadley is God’s work of art, her heart faithful through suffering, her whole life still devoted to Christ. 

Maybe she’ll get more visitors soon, or maybe angels themselves will one day come calling. Either way, she’ll be here, ready with love and a pine cone wreath for anyone who walks in. She’s seen too much glory in this fractured life to ever give up on beauty, hope, and love.

About every other year, I create something original (art, writing, or both), mass-produce it, and give it to friends. Lucky for you, it’s an on year. But this one would cost a fortune to print, so I’m gifting it as a funny little eBook.

A month ago, I wrote a choose-your-own-adventure story called Surviving the Anaconda for a school event. Once it was written, I figured I might as well do something with it, so I expanded it a bit, gave it a format and design, and wrote a few silly snake poems to tack onto the end. Page 2 includes more technical instructions on how to navigate the document. Don’t be intimidated by the length of the book because all those pages are just spacing for separate options in the choose-your-own adventure; it shouldn’t actually take more than a few minutes to play one round.

If you’re afraid of snakes or you don’t appreciate a dark sense of humor… then this book may not be for you. Hint: most readers do not survive the anaconda, at least not the first time.

So… merry Christmas? And good luck out there! Let me know how you die or survive.

View or download the book here: surviving-the-anaconda