“No,” she said simply, firmly. “That was just something she made.”

My Grandma Ruby was an outstanding cook. I don’t remember her making anything bad, except for that time late in life when she added too much sage to the Christmas Day dressing and it turned green. We should have realized her mind was slipping then, but we didn’t—or we didn’t want to—and we ate it anyway.

But for most of my life, Grandma Ruby was an amazing cook. She made pies and cobblers, cakes and caramel corn. When she’d keep my brother and me on a night when my parents had to go somewhere without us, she’d pop us popcorn on the stovetop, a time-honored tradition long gone out of style by that time. She canned; she made jellies; she tried new things. For years, she made lunch for her “boys” (that’s what she called her sons, even when their hair had gone as gray as hers) every day. At her funeral, I was struck by the number of people who told me how they had often sat at her table and what a good cook she’d been.

Truth be told, I took most of her cooking skills for granted. I didn’t realize as a child that those opportunities to sit at her table and hang out in her kitchen were fleeting—and I sometimes wish that I had taken advantage of more of them. If I’m being honest, I don’t remember a lot of the dishes she made; I just remember that they were good.

But there’s one thing she made that I can never forget: her peach cobbler. A double crust baked to golden perfection. Soft, juicy peaches and a thick, beautiful peach-colored filling. Served warm with a little vanilla ice cream on top, it was perfection. It was and remains my favorite dessert. Ever.

I don’t know if my grandma knew that. I’m sure she knew I liked peach cobbler, but I don’t know that she knew I thought hers was the best I’d ever tasted. I wish that I had asked her how to make it or even helped her, but as a child and a teenager who thought she had the world by the tail, it never occurred to me. Until it was too late and Alzheimer’s or dementia had robbed her mind of the recipe.

Years ago, when I’d moved out on my own and carved out a life for myself in another state about four hours from my Midwestern roots, I found a recipe that reminded me of hers. And I messed with it, adjusting this and adding that, until the result reminded me of her peach cobbler.

It’s good, but it’s still not perfect. It’s still not quite as good as Grandma Ruby’s.

But I still make it often, for friends, for work, for church. Many times, when people are gathered around my table, it’s the dessert I choose to make. And I remember the gift of hospitality my grandma gave to so many people.

And I hope that when they sit at my table, they get just a little taste of that gift.

So I’m a devoted Facebook fan. I’ll admit it. There’s no shame in it.

I. Like. Facebook.

A lot.

And I’m not one of those people who gets all up in arms when something about Facebook changes. It’s the nature of the beast; technology needs to change to keep up with the times. And at least FB is out there trying to be innovative and anticipate change than waiting to see what everyone else is doing. Plus, with most Facebook changes, I might dislike it mightily for awhile, but then I get used to it and generally like it.

Except that whole highlighted stories thing. I mean really. It might work for someone, but I really just want to see things in my news feed in chronological order. But even with that, you gave us the ability to sort our posts so that they would appear chronologically. That’s cool! That’s paying attention to your users.

And I’m not all down on the Timeline change that’s coming to Facebook over the next few weeks. I actually migrated my page to it a few weeks ago. But this morning as I was watching a segment on the news about the changes to Facebook, I realized something of grave importance: I’m going to have to explain and teach Timeline to my mom.

Let me say that again:

I’m going to have to explain AND teach Timeline to my mom.

Facebook, do you realize that I’ve just recently helped her to understand how to sort her news feed, unsubscribe from annoying posters without unfriending them, and taught her who to unfriend someone? She’s picked up a lot about Facebook and is pretty good at it, especially since she got her iPhone, but she asks me questions on the phone and every time I visit. She’s not technology illiterate, but changing it constantly and significantly tends to throw her for a loop. Which, of course, Timeline will do.

Meaning my next visit home will include a tutorial on Timeline and privacy settings. Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s not that I mind really or that I don’t want to hang out with my mom. It’s just that I’d rather spend time talking with her than talking about Facebook. And if your change had been a wee bit more slow and step-by-step (read: not a complete shift in how our profiles work), I wouldn’t be facing a barrage of questions in my near future.

I choose to believe, Facebook, that you didn’t realize what you were doing to millions of 20- to 30-somethings when you made these changes. But you’re about to—when your moms and grandmas start calling with questions!

Sometimes, I’m not even doing it out loud. I’ll just be brushing my teeth, drying my hair, or some other daily task and realize there’s music in my brain, then figure out what it is.

Then there are the days I wake up singing a song, rising out of bed with the lyrics and tune fully intact, as if I’d been singing them all night long in my dreams. And who knows, maybe I have.

But it’s those songs that I tend to pay attention to, the ones that pop into my brain out of the blue at a moment when I needed to hear that lyric or understand something. I don’t think those moments are accidents, but rather a little nudge from the Holy Spirit to pay attention to something.

And lately, there have been two songs on repeat in my brain: “You Will Find Me” by Andrew Ripp and “Psalm 46″ by Jenny and Tyler. Let me explain:

“You Will Find Me” is from Andrew Ripp’s She Remains the Same album. I ran across the song after I bought the album on iTunes after a night when he wowed me with his performance at a Lightning 100 Sunday Night show. (I’ve actually written about this song before.) In a time of my life when so many things have felt out-of-control and confusing, when I felt tired, broken, and faithless, this song has kind of become a theme song of sorts. It’s popped into my mind as I’ve read emails at work, when I was upset, or was the song my heart was singing this morning when the alarm went off. He (Jesus) will find me. I am not alone. He has called my name, and I am not the same. He is in control. All lessons I need to hear again and again.

The other song that’s been haunting me, popping into my brain at the strangest time, like during the middle of a tornado watch at 1 a.m. as I sat in my safe place with a dog with Frankenstein stitches down the side of her face shaking on my lap, is “Psalm 46.” It’s by Jenny and Tyler, a husband and wife duo from Nashville I heard several months ago at the Bluebird as part of a Music City Unsigned show. I liked the song then, but after I downloaded a few of their songs from their album Faint Not, it’s the one I’ve played over and over. In the middle of literal and metaphorical storms, it’s been a good reminder that God knows what He’s doing, that He is faithful, and that above all, I can trust Him, even when life feels like it’s falling apart at the seams and even when I don’t understand His plan at all. Hallelujah, He is with me.

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” —Matthew 28:20

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Sloot
© 2010, Rebecca Sloot

The Review:

Before we can even discuss this book, I have to divulge some information about myself which may lead you to call me a dork. Basically, I’m that person who took extra science classes in high school not because she wanted to go into a scientific field, but because she liked biology. I took advanced biology because I thought (and still do) biology was cool—and you also got to dissect all kinds of animals, from earthworms to fetal pigs.

I’m one of those people who still likes to learn. I’m still amazed by science and how the body works and all the intricacies of life on earth. So, I guess it’s fortunate for me that one of my good friends is a biology professor at a local university and knows I enjoy learning, so she often tells me interesting facts or stories. Several months ago, she started telling me about HeLa cells and how they were developed. Basically, HeLa cells are one of the oldest cell lines used in cell research. They were developed from cervical cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who died shortly thereafter. Her immortal line of cells have lived longer now than she did—and have traveled into space, were vital in developing the polio vaccine, and have played a role in all kinds of research that have led to therapies and treatments for cancer and other maladies. It was an incredibly interesting conversation.

So for Christmas, she gave me a book, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I laughed out loud, remembering our conversation and wondered if the book could be as good as she said. I’m not going to lie: I didn’t expect much, but decided to read it because she’d given it to me.

But I was wrong. This book is incredibly interesting and I often found myself reading it for hours, just wanting to know what happened next, which is not usually something that happens to me when I’m reading non-fiction. Written in a journalistic style and well-researched, this book is focused on telling both the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family and HeLa cells and science. It’s such an incredible juxtaposition to realize as you read this book that while Henrietta’s cells were making great things possible in science and medicine, Henrietta’s family was so poor they couldn’t afford health insurance.

Skloot’s book is worth the read if you’re even remotely interested in science. Skloot takes the time to tell Henrietta’s story in the most thorough way possible, a fitting tribute to a woman whose name was virtually unknown for many years while her cells made much of modern research possible. At the same time, the book raises some interesting questions about cells, research, and who has control over our tissues once they’re taken from our bodies. The true beauty of Skloot’s book though, is her ability to make science readable for non-scientists while making sure the human experience is the story that comes to the forefront in the end.

I wouldn’t have ever picked this book on my own, but I’m so glad I read it—and got to meet Henrietta Lacks and her children along the way!

Not a first-thing-in-the-morning, 5-a.m.-is-awesome kind of person, but once I get up and I’ve had a few minutes, I’m generally in a fairly decent mood.

Then, today happened.

First off, my dog has been sick. She’s got really bad teeth and has developed an awful infection because of it. So she feels terrible and her little face and neck are swollen. She’s been on antibiotics and pain pills for several days, and every morning I wake up hoping she’s improved significantly during the night.

She hasn’t. And a week of waking up and having your hopes dashed can be kind of depressing. Today started like that.

And it was more than a little bit of a downer. When you love a dog and you’ve had her for 13 years, you’re sad when she’s not feeling well. Or, if you’re not, you have a heart of stone!

After breakfast and some quiet time reading Scripture and journaling, I was somewhat more prepared to meet the day, or at least more focused on the fact that God is in control and I need to let some things go.

So then it was time to get ready for work. I always turn the shower on when I go in the bathroom to brush my teeth and put in my contacts because it takes awhile for the hot water to get hot. I did that today and the whole time I was brushing my teeth and putting in my contacts, I thought it sounded weird. Louder than usual.

That’s because I turned on the faucet, but never pulled the lever to switch to the shower head. And apparently the thing that controls the drain on the bathtub was turned up, so the bathtub had been filling with water the whole time.

Great when you’re taking a bath; kind of useless when you’re taking a shower.

Then, I tried to wash my hair with conditioner and it took me a good few minutes to figure out why it wasn’t getting sudsy.

Then, after correcting the whole washing-my-hair-with-conditioner situation, it was time to dry my hair with the hair dryer. I recently had to get a new hairdryer when the cheap one I bought to replace one I really liked died unexpectedly. I thought that cheap hairdryer would only last a year or so. It lasted about six.

It finally died right before Christmas and I made do with my travel hairdryer until I could get a new one. It’s hot pink and has a retractable cord. And today, the retractable cord would NOT retract all the way. No matter how many times I tried. Finally, I gave up, wrapped the unretracted portion of the cord around the dryer, stuffed it in the cabinet and went downstairs to make a sandwich for my lunch.

Where I almost dropped the jar of pickles.

Needless to say, I’m happy I got to work with no incident.

And that I don’t smell like pickles.

OK, attached probably isn’t the right word. I love my dog.

I love that she’s happy to see me when I walk in the door from work. I love that she wakes up every morning excited to meet a new day full of new opportunities. I like it when she at least pretends to listen when I talk to her, when she comes to check on me when I’m crying, and the way she runs up the stairs at top speed and looks for me in all the wrong places.

I’ve had Muffin the Wonder Poodle since she was about a month old. She weighed about 3 pounds when we got her, and I only just realized that I weighed about the same when I was born. I got Muffin during my sophomore year of college, after a beloved dog of mine had died in an accident. And Muffin quickly became my dog, even if I was away at college most of the time.

Muffin lived with me during the summer I lived in Columbia and had an internship in Jefferson City. She moved with me to Nashville when I knew no one. She’s traveled with me, going on road trips to New Orleans and the Smokey Mountains and to visit my brother when he worked at a camp during the summers. She’s been a constant.

And even though she’s old and grouchy and she doesn’t have many teeth. Even though her hair has faded from its bright red to a strawberry blonde, there’s still something special about her in my opinion.

Mostly because every once in awhile she looks at me like she thinks that I’m the most amazing person that ever lived. And everyone needs to have someone who thinks that about them, even it it is just a dog.

You all know what I’m talking about. It’s that day when nothing really goes all that wrong, but nothing really goes all that right either. It’s the day that you say something just to be funny but it gets taken some other way and you find yourself embarrassed and uncomfortable, unsure how to react. It’s that day when you work and work and work and don’t seem to make much progress. It’s that day when you say more than you should have. It’s that day when something unexpected happens, causes you stress, and you find yourself near tears in a public place.

Not that all of those things happened to me. But they did, in one day. That day.

And at the end of “that” day, you get to decide how you’re going to respond and the attitude you’re going to have about it all. You could wrap yourself up in embarrassment and shyness, convinced everyone will remember your faux paus and are secretly laughing at you behind your back. You could dissolve into a puddle of tears or get angry and go to bed mad.

Or you could realize that it was just one day. One day full of minor successes and a day when you proven that you’re still a sinner in a need of a Savior. It could be a day when you realize that even if the emergency/tragedy/unexpected event isn’t that big of a deal to most of the world, it is a big deal to the people who love you most. You could recognize that you were made for community, not to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and push your way through the world without anyone else’s help. The day you realize your words have power and you have no control over them once they’re out of your mouth.

It could be the day of whispered prayers, of confession, of a renewed commitment to pursue a Savior who changes you.

Because like it or not, “that” day will likely come again.

But it doesn’t have to end the same and you don’t have to repeat the same mistakes.

And “that” day doesn’t have to kill you.

Because as sure as the sun sets, it also rises.

And after we’d crossed the finish line and I’d realized that our official time was 2 hours and 30 minutes (not three hours, there are this things called rolling start times) and had a plethora of snacks and rested a little, I vowed that I would make running a way of life.

And I did.

For awhile.

Then, life got really busy. My workload seemed to grow exponentially and time grew short while various other responsibilities seemed to get even bigger. Then, birthdays came and the holiday season arrived and running got shelved for a bit in favor of busyness, baking, shopping, and running around in circles wondering how I was going to get everything done.

And that kind of running does not, of course, count as actual running.

But on New Year’s Eve, I signed up to run the Country Music Half Marathon in 2012. Again.  True training starts in February, but the preliminary running hasn’t been going so well. My workload hasn’t gotten any smaller; truth be told there’s probably more to do. Time is hard to come by and I have yet another cold—but I’m going to do this and do it well.

So if you hear me complaining or I call you whining about how I’m tired and don’t want to run, remind me that anything that matters usually takes a little hard work.

Then tell me to “Run, baby, run!”

And seeing that my last experience with a check engine light—the time my VW Jetta’s engine bit the dust—was a bit traumatic, I instantly feared the worst.

But knowing I couldn’t just wish it away, I called the service place and took it in the next morning. By mid-afternoon they called and told me it was just a sensor and would be easily repaired once they had the part. So they ordered the part and we waited. Finally, this past Wednesday they called. The sensor was in and I could bring the car in on Thursday. I readily agreed.

Then Thursday morning came. And I realized that I had to bring food for a meeting with me to work. I also had my big honking purse and a bag I carry work stuff in. But, I soldier on and head the service department. Check-in was relatively easy and fast and I go in the waiting area to wait for the courtesy van driver to announce his presence.

And I wait.

With a chip and dip plate and a huge bags of pita and tortilla chips along with spinach artichoke and layered dip on my lap.

Five minutes pass. No big deal.

Then 10.

Then 20. I’ve now been in the waiting area for 30 minutes and there’s no courtesy van in sight. I could walk to work; it’s not actually that far. . .but it’s misting and I have about 4 tons of stuff to carry. So, not wanting to be “that” person but wanting to get to work, I approach the cashiers and ask. They stare at me like I’m the most impatient person ever and tell me it will be a few minutes. Thankfully, it was. I gratefully grab my stuff and head out to the van, thinking in a few minutes I’ll be at work.

Little did I know the adventure was just beginning!

The driver zipped out of the parking lot and decided to take another lady to her destination first because it was “closer.” Maybe he was just confused, because it wasn’t closer. So now it’s after 8 a.m. and I’m somewhere off of 12 Avenue and seemingly getting further away from work with every minute. After dropping that lady off, we head for work. . . .down 12 Avenue. If you’ve ever been to Nashville, you know that if you take 12th north toward downtown, you end up under the railroad tracks and have to drive until you hit Church Street to get anywhere in the downtown vicinity. So we drove past all of the Gulch apartment, the railroad tracks, the underneath of Union Station, and some new apartments that are being built along 12th near the Church Street intersection. Finally, we turn onto Church Street and the sign for the street my office is on is in sight! Almost there!

Then, the guy gets completely confused about where to drop us (me and another girl who works here) off and ends up dropping us off at the Credit Union entrance. Which requires a special pass that neither of us had. So we had to march across the visitor’s parking lot, maneuver through the double set of doors in the lobby and get into the building. All the while, I was carrying my purse, my work bag and 4 million pounds of food and serving dishes.

And while I was finally in the building, I was FAR from my office. I had to traipse past the cafe, through display area and up a set of stairs and up the elevators. I finally got to my office around 8:30 a.m. And by that point, I was exhausted.

Hopefully, my next time at the service department won’t end up being such an adventure!

Writer.

A word that sits there, staring me in the face day after day.

Yes, I write. I write devotions for work. I edit, rework, and rewrite submissions for the magazine. I draft emails, write a column each month for the magazine, and write on this blog.

But as 2011 faded into 2012, that word started to haunt me a little. Can you call yourself a writer if you never really write?

The answer came more quickly than I’d wanted: a resounding no. I can write it in my descriptions of myself, but if I don’t actually write I’m not a writer. And truth be told, besides this blog, I wasn’t doing much to exercise the gift or talent outside of my work.

For years I’ve told friends about things I wanted to write. A half-finished story I’ve worked on for years that really has no direction. “When I write my cookbook, I’ll make sure this gets in,” I’d say when someone complemented me on a dish I’d made. I’d talk about all the things I wanted to write, but I’d never actually write them.

So, this year, I’m taking the time to sit down and write. Maybe not every day, but more often than not, I expect to find myself sitting in my “office” (read: guest bedroom where my desk is) tapping away on the keyboard for a few minutes to an hour. And all these writing appointments have a goal: to write that cookbook.

I’ve actually even mentioned it to a few people, which is a new thing for me. Usually, I keep my

istockphoto/ © Christine Glade

dreams close to my chest, and only reveal them when they’re so close to fruition I can’t fail.

I could fail on this one. I could quit halfway through and never finish it. But I’m putting it out there, and I’m working on it. It may never be published or sold in a bookstore, but by the end of this year, I’m hoping to have a manuscript of my very own cookbook—a collection of essays and recipes.

It may be the worst idea ever—but at least I’m taking the chance to live the dream. And maybe, just maybe, it will become a reality.