Behind my parents house in Alabama is a stretch of big woods that drops off in hard edges, boulders precariously stacked below in whispering creek beds. When the sun finally started shining up over the hollow (holler), it lit up the leaves, all the yellow barely hanging on, God-art in action, the prettiest display I’ve seen there. 

The driveway stays wet and riveted. The deer come out here along our pasture, where my daddy keeps Sadie, his big baby Clydesdale. She makes his 6 feet and 6 inches seem nearly small. My boys think they’re both giants.

Going home to Alabama isn’t easy. So much of my heart has denied how Arkansas really is home, how Seth really is home, how my Jesus prepares one so beautifully for me. When I go back, I remember the life I lived there, certain people and houses, and I’m mortified and humbled. I want to crawl somewhere and hide. My nature is wild as kudzu.

We’re all older now. My parents have 5 grandsons. It’s funny how I thought they knew everything they were going to know. As a kid, I didn’t realize how they would continue to learn, to lead us better. I never planned to see such grace in them because they know the old me that sometimes creeps up and confuses herself with the new me. Home is the last place I let myself experience grace, and it seems, too, that it’s the last place I give grace.

I’m learning how it all has to do with what we believe about forgiveness. Am I really forgiven? Are they? 

I believe the answer is Yes.