olbigjim

By the time I reached grown-man height, and by the time my voice settled into something deeper than a screen-door squeak, I had been through enough revivals, altar calls, and Second Coming scares to last several lifetimes. If fear of the Lord truly was the beginning of wisdom, then I ought to have been the wisest boy in Calhoun County. Trouble was, fear and wisdom do not always shake hands. In fact, fear spends a lot of its time pretendin’ to be wisdom when it is really just fear in Sunday clothes.

Somewhere in my twenties, the terror began to crack. Not in one dramatic moment, but in little ways that crept up quiet. I would hear a clap of thunder and find myself more concerned about my car windows bein’ down than whether Gabriel was oilin’ his trumpet. I would pass a tent revival on a summer night, seein’ the glow and hearin’ the roar, and instead of dread I felt a curious affection. It was like seein’ an old house you grew up in. You remember the creaking floorboards and the shadows that used to make you tremble, but you are also older now, and you know which noises were ghosts and which were just your imagination draggin’ you around by the collar.

One evening, many years after those tent-lighted nights, I found myself sittin’ alone in the backyard with a cup of coffee balanced on my knee. Lightning bugs blinked over the grass like the lights from those old revival lanterns. The air had that soft Alabama sweetness. And out of nowhere, I felt the ghost of an old fear settle near me, like a cat nosin’ at my memories.

I let it sit for a minute.

Then I asked myself a simple question.
When did I ever feel closest to God?

Not when I was scared.
Not when I was kneelin’ at an altar tryin’ to repent for sins I had not yet committed.
Not when a preacher painted the sky with flames and insisted the world would end long before I finished school.

No.
The moments when I felt closest to God were quieter.

Like the time I sat with my Pawpaw on the tailgate of his pickup at Dugger Mountain overlook, watchin’ the sun melt behind the ridgeline. He never spoke about prophecy or judgment. He talked about trout runnin’ in the creek and how the world was prettier when you stopped tryin’ to judge every inch of it.

Or the time my Mawmaw knelt beside me when I was sick, pressin’ a cool cloth to my forehead, hummin’ an old hymn off-key, and sayin’ the Lord had better heal me quick because she refused to raise a fool’s imagination about how to iron his own shirts.

Or the evening I walked by the river alone, listenin’ to the frogs call back and forth in their low, moonlight voices, and realized that the world had kept right on turnin’ no matter what the evangelists had predicted.

Those moments did not roar.
They whispered.

And somewhere in those whispers, I found somethin’ I had not known how to name.

Faith.

Not fear.

Faith.

The warm kind.
The quiet kind.
The kind that does not need a trumpet or a canvas tent or a preacher shoutin’ so loud you can smell his sermon on his breath.

The kind that lets a man breathe instead of flinch.

The Congregational Holiness Church gave me many things.
It gave me memories as bright as the tent lights.
It gave me stories so wild they still rattle the windows when I tell them.
It gave me nightmares, sure, but it also gave me a peculiar kind of hope, though it took me years to pry it loose from the terror wrapped around it.

Fear told me to run.

Faith told me to rest.

Fear shook me awake at night.

Faith let me sleep.

Fear shouted.

Faith listened.

Fear said the Lord would come like a thief in the night.

Faith said the Lord would sit with me on quiet evenings while the lightning bugs drifted in the yard.

You cannot stay a child your whole life.
At some point, you learn to sort the thunder from the trumpet.
At some point, you realize the sky is not always about to split open.
At some point, you learn that love is stronger than fear, especially love that is patient enough to let you grow into it.

I still think fondly of those old tent poles and sawdust floors.
I remember the songs.
I remember the heat.
I remember the warnings that came thick as mosquitoes.
And I remember bein’ small enough to believe every word.

But I grew.
And my faith grew with me.
It outgrew the shadows.
It outgrew the fear.
It outgrew the nightmares that once chased me down graveyard road in my dreams.

Now, when thunder rolls across the ridges of northeast Alabama, I look up at the sky and smile.

Not because I am expectin’ the Second Coming, but because I am expectin’ rain.

And that, Y’all, is how I learned the difference between fear and faith.
Fear trembles.
Faith steadies.
Fear shouts.
Faith smiles back.

And the Good Lord, I believe, prefers the smile.

*****

New Yesterdays can be found at: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.