Honesty’s Invitation

LORD, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? The one . . . who speaks the truth from their heart.

—Psalm 15:1–2

When my mom turned sixty, my best friends and hers gathered around my dinner table for food and wine and laughter and storytelling. I’ve known her best friends for years, but as the night went on, I realized I didn’t know how they all came to be friends.

One after another, these women told the stories of how they first became connected with my mom. The constant in all those stories is that her honesty invited them to be honest, too. Her writing and speaking and truth-telling—so deeply against the grain for most pastors’ wives—made these women feel like they could tell the truth, too. Some of them sought her out in the darkest seasons of their lives because she had written so honestly about the darkest seasons of her own life.

We sat around that table for hours—our plates and glasses filled and refilled. We told stories and read poems and passages from the Bible and lines from songs, toasting and celebrating all the ways my mom has made our lives better, has inspired us and set us free, and has been an example for us of how life can be if we dare.