The Little Boy and the Talking Rose: The Rest of the Story

This is my sister, Anne, seen here sporting a mistletoe headband and a smear of chocolate on her chin, along with her hopelessly adorable smile. In addition to being my youngest sister, she is also the talking rose. But perhaps I should back up a little.

The term "wanderlust" was practically invented for me. Born and raised in a small town, I've always longed to go see the world -- China, Ireland, Egypt, exciting places far away. A southern town with a population of 5,000 simply held no interest for me. I have family here, of course, but the pull of the unknown was always stronger than the comfort of the familiar.

Until Anne.

A few years ago, I was in the process of selecting a college to attend. My test scores were exceptional; I could have easily gone anywhere, and I planned to do so. Though there was a university within an hour's drive of my house, I wanted to go, and to go far away. Harvard was an option, as were various other good schools, each of them no less than two states away from Mississippi, where I live. I really didn't have an overall plan, to be honest. My "to-do" list resembled the following:

1. Get away from here
2. Make a new "to-do" list

Until Anne.

Anne was a bit of a surprise to all of us, to be honest. It had been more than 10 years since our family had seen a new child. My siblings and I had settled into our defined roles within the family -- Ellen the drama queen, Emily the homebody, Daniel the tech geek. And then there was me, the impending globetrotter.

Until Anne.

With Anne's arrival, the family priorities shifted. She might not have impacted me so deeply if she had arrived a few years earlier, or a few years later. Situated precisely as she was, however, Anne shook my world. As I said, the pull of the unknown has always been strong for me. Here, in Anne, was a meeting of the familiar with the unknown. Who was she? What would she be like? What was God's plan for her? These are questions that tugged at me at the time and, truthfully speaking, I'm still mostly unable to answer.

What I did know was that if I left for exciting places far away, I'd barely ever scratch the surface of those answers. And so Anne, the surprising, beautiful talking rose was the original driving force behind my decision to attend school within 40 miles of my house.

A lot of people will say that I made a foolish decision, sacrificing opportunities at leading universities in order to stay in Mississippi. To those people, I merely say that I would trade all the education in the world for the wonderfulness (as Bill Cosby would say) of knowing Anne.

In a lot of ways, I feel the same about my faith. I used to be a very intellectual person; maybe I still am -- I'll let you decide. Faith, the simple act of trust, was the ultimate foolishness in my eyes. I had to question everything, investigate everywhere, discover exciting ideas far away. It was never enough simply to know something. I had to know how and why I knew it, which in turn had to be explained and analyzed via the same process, until I found myself doubting my own existence -- a situation which, despite its philosophical interest, isn't really all that healthy over long periods of time. I held others to the same standard. When my youth minister (and soon to be good friend) explained his faith in God to me, I all but scoffed, asking him what solid, objective and verifiable evidential basis he had for his beliefs.

I think I was kind of a jerk; maybe I still am -- I'll let you decide.

I don't know when the change started. That's like asking when the rising tide first touched your sandcastle. You may be able to answer the question in general terms, but you can't define the moment down to a precise millisecond. At some point, my eyes were opened to the things around me -- the love of my parents, the community of my hometown, the beauty of a strong faith. Like the small boy, I was hooked by this new and exciting thing very near.

In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller says that faith isn't completely something you choose. It's also something that just kind of happens to you. That's how it was with me. The beauty of God, of Christ, and of just plain agape love as a way of life has captured me. I don't have to know exactly how it happened. I have no need for evidence in favor of it, no need of someone with a Ph.D. to tell me what to do. It's simply enough to walk with God day-by-day, taking His answers as they come.

That's not to say I don't have questions. Of course I still ask questions -- everyone does. But I try to remember that I'm not by any means an expert on the meaning of life, skeptically searching for holes in the fabric of reality. Instead, I'm more like a small child, excitedly peppering his Father with questions. Sometimes, I ask Him one of those hard questions, like "why is the sky blue?" or "where do babies come from?" or "why do people hurt each other?" He smiles (or frowns) and gives to me only as much as I'm capable of understanding, leaving the greater part of life's mysteries unexplained. And I'm OK with that. Once upon a time, such answers weren't enough for me.

Until faith.