Tag: reflection

HopeWords Conference 2024

Posted on by Rachel Lonas

When you own your own tutoring business, you have to research and pay for professional development for yourself. HopeWords has been a writing conference that is an easy place to say yes to every year. It’s located in the beautiful state of West Virginia which is actually a reasonable driving distance from us in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All the speakers sit out among the audience and eat at the same tiny restaurants as everyone else. Everyone just chats like it’s the most normal thing to do with strangers who write from all over the U.S.

This is my third year and I want to emphasize that one of the blessings of HopeWords is that they are making space for all ages at the conference. My oldest daughter, age 14, came this year and last year and Travis (the host), the other attendees, and the authors have welcomed, embraced, and challenged her. In her everyday life she is used to people mispronouncing and misspelling her biblical name. Many of the conference attendees when they met her said, “What a beautiful name” because they understood its biblical significance. Daniel Nayeri, the keynote speaker, signed her book and when I said offhandedly that she has 3 other sisters with Bible place names he said enthusiastically, “Ooh. Tell me all of them!” as we proceeded to have a short and lively conversation. The next day when he came in the restaurant where we were eating he boisterously (and so jolly-like!), pointed at all of us saying he knew us and we just laughed and waved right back at him going back to our conversation, like it was not odd to give a friendly wave to a Newbery award winner at dinner.

Our college friend, Amanda Opelt, sings and writes and was invited to welcome guests back into the afternoon sessions with her guitar. She asked our daughter a week before the conference if she would be willing to sing the high harmony with her on an Appalachian tune covered by the Wailin’ Jennys. When our daughter joined her on stage she introduced her as her friend, not my “college friends’ daughter” but a young woman worthy of her identity and relationship in her own right. Amanda even paid for appetizers at the local restaurant saying she owed her a portion of her honorarium.

Photographs by Cheryl Eichman

At the “after party” on Saturday we sat at a table with the men responsible for a lot of the revitalization projects going on in Bluefield, West Virginia. We had a riveting discussion on community development practices for 30 minutes. The undertone was about not giving up hope in hard places. My daughter said later it was a fascinating conversation and not at all what she thought we’d end up talking about with so many writers around!

It’s the little things like that that remind me why HopeWords is special. There is a deep respect for children and young adults within this Christian community of writers and community movers and shakers. The attendees treated my daughter like an adult. The speakers did the same in their speeches and in how they are truly the same humble people on and off the stage. Anyone involved with HopeWords welcomes and invites all into a life of writing, creativity, community, and curiosity. As an educator, I cannot think of a better mission for a conference.

This year I noticed there were many more young people than had come in the past and I hope the number of teens keeps rising as this conference continues to flourish. Our youngest daughter is in Kindergarten and she says she has “poem words” in her mind. She illustrates stories about pirates, animals, and princesses constantly. Maybe some day she will want to come, too?


Until next year,

Rachel

Consider the Wildflowers

Posted on by Rachel Lonas

It could have been my imagination, but the air felt much more biting on the walk home from church at noon. In my mind, the day should always promise more warmth as the hours go by, not less. We walked anyway.

Walking to and from church is a normal occurrence for our family. We pass the apartment buildings behind our home, the local cemetery, the Methodist church, the title pawn shop. Then we cross the busy four lane road (which has no crosswalk), past the used tire store on one side and emergency service vehicles on the other. The final stretch is the row of homeowners, their various and sundry yard ornaments, and curious yappy dogs.

Today, however, the walk was a bit blustery even for our usual dogged determination for exercise and insistence on the children being more pedestrian (in all uses of the word) than they would normally care to be. Despite having to cross the traffic-filled street together at lunchtime, the route is very close to a straight line from point A to point B, so none of our children could ever get lost. Even the three year old knows to walk on the correct side of the road at all times, but we still have varying paces. My husband’s lumbering 6’3″ stride is not the same as my impatient I-feel-like-I-had-3-cups-of-coffee-already stride, nor is it the same as our preschooler whose inconsistent stride is always based on her whims.

So being vigilant, but still several paces ahead so as to encourage our 3 year old to reach the warmth of our home faster, I suddenly saw her stop on the side of the road and shriek with delight. What could have caused this burst of exuberance in such a chilly climb up the hill?

She found a lone dandelion.

Being so low to the ground, a burst of sunniest yellow had caught her eye amidst the dull and dark browns while the rest of us just motored on past so we could reach our destination. She laughed so naturally as she picked it for me to put in my coat pocket. Once inside, I started talking with my husband and getting out the leftovers to heat up for lunch, forgetting all about the flower. Out of the corner of my eye I saw our daughter filling up a clear plastic cup half full of water from the fridge.

“No, that’s too much for you to drink. You need to get a straw and then take it to the table.”

Frustrated in being redirected and misunderstood she said plainly, “No, it’s for the flower, Mommy!”

She hadn’t forgotten it.

I don’t know if her instinct to give the flower water came from watching her 7 year old sister do this all year round with “shot glass bouquets” from the yard or if she just knows that flowers need water to even have a chance at surviving in a house. She wasn’t thinking about how quickly it would wither once brought inside; she wanted to preserve and share the beauty of God’s creation as best as she knew how. Either way, her exceeding childish joy and loving care for something we older people ignore or pull up as a nuisance gave me a needed opportunity to reflect on the Lord’s Day.

“Consider how the wildflowers grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that’s how God clothes the grass, which is in the field today and is thrown into the furnace tomorrow, how much more will He do for you—you of little faith?” Matthew 6:27-28 (HCSB)

My husband reminded me that this passage from the Sermon on the Mount is actually a meditation on the first commandment, where Jesus tells His listeners that in God there is no need for worry because He is the provider. The Greek in verse 27 essentially translates into “be discipled by this flower”. In our age of instant and easy answers, how strange it is to be taught how to orient your life by a plant. And yet that is what I was called to on the roadside — to notice that He is still giving me an opportunity to push out distraction and comfort to see His wonder and provision that was so evident to my little girl. Being outdoors with my children is a constant reminder that I am too addicted to the illusion of self-sufficiency and far too rational to seize moments of discipleship that have been there all along.