Home Is Where My People Are: The Roads That Lead Us to Where We Belong

by Sophie Hudson

  I didn’t waste any time once I got home to Myrtlewood; I started the liquid diet the first week of summer break. I had an initial physical exam and weigh-in with my doctor, and that first weigh-in really cemented my internal sentiment that “IT’S TIME TO PUT DOWN THE FRIED CHICKEN, GLADYS.”

  So I did. I put down the fried chicken and the fried okra—and the fried dill pickles, too. For the next two months I faithfully mixed my “chocolate” (oh, do I ever use that term loosely) powder with water and choked down supplement shakes three times a day. By the end of the second week I could barely smell that powder without retching—which, in hindsight, was probably a physiological sign that HUMANS ARE NOT MEANT TO INGEST THIS SUBSTANCE—but I pushed through because of my desire to be a Liquid Diet Overachiever. I drank the shakes, I heated the broth, I ate the little cookies made of cardboard and a few underutilized grains that were supposed to qualify as a sweet treat.

  Somehow—and this totally confounds me because I was subsisting on a few hundred calories a day—I even mustered up enough energy to exercise. Emma Kate had introduced me to Sandi Patty’s music the previous semester, so in the mornings or afternoons I’d pop the Make His Praise Glorious cassette in my Walkman and hoof it around Mama and Daddy’s front yard, down to the pasture, and back up to the front yard, and then I’d repeat the same route until I felt light headed or overheated, whichever came first.

  (I know. It’s ridiculous.)

  (That’s why I’m sitting here thinking back on that time and shaking my head at my own dadgum self.)

  When the heat got to be too much, I’d take my workout inside. I really liked to play Sandi’s Songs from the Heart as the sound track for some light aerobics. And if you’ve ever heard “Pour on the Power,” you totally understand where I’m coming from—because if there was ever a contemporary Christian song that begged for a double-quick crossover step, that one was it.

  It seems like whenever someone I know embarks on a quest to lose weight, that person will usually get to the second or third week of healthier living and start saying, “You know, I’m just not hungry anymore! I don’t really have any cravings! I’m totally satisfied by eating a cup of boiled cabbage and then taking a few deep breaths! I even forget to eat sometimes!”

  Well, that was not really my experience. There was rarely a time when I didn’t want gigantor helpings of asparagus casserole or creamed potatoes or, you know, the entirety of the hot bar at Quincy’s (somebody say it with me: “HOMEMADE YEAST ROLLS”). However, I was determined to have my personal made-for-TV movie experience when I went to Starkville; I wanted people to be astounded and amazed and awestruck by the progress I’d made. So I stuck to my guns and stuck to my diet and felt really good about the way the numbers on the scale kept sliding on down.

  But in the back of my mind, I think I knew those results were going to be temporary. They had to be temporary—because the only way my metabolism was going to cooperate was if I continued to starve myself. And that’s exactly what I was doing: starving myself. That realization cemented itself about a month into the summer when my body said, “NO MORE” and I almost fainted in Walmart. The steady rotation of shakes and broth and, lo, even more shakes had left me feeling as weak as a day-old kitten, and my crash diet finally caught up with me somewhere between the outdoor grills and the wicker settees. One minute Mama and I were looking at patio furniture, and the next minute I was breaking into a cold sweat, watching the ceiling fade to black, and collapsing onto a lawn chair.

  I believe this is what nutritional experts might call a WARNING SIGN.

  I tried to make a joke about it (imagine that), but it scared the fire out of me. I was shaking, I was hungry, and I was more than a little freaked out by how fatigued I was. Fortunately Mama was there to make sure that I was okay, and once I started to feel better and she was satisfied that she didn’t need to take me to the doctor’s office, she promptly drove me home and cooked me two steaks.

  She wouldn’t let me out of her sight until I’d eaten every single bite.

  Baby girl here was a smidge deficient in protein.

  It was the beginning of August when I loaded my car and drove back to Starkville. I was fortyish pounds lighter than I’d been in May, and I felt a small surge of pride as I buckled my seat belt and pushed James Taylor’s Greatest Hits into the cassette player. I was on my way to my junior year of college, and everything about the trip felt familiar to me—except for my smaller size. I turned on Highway 45 and drove north, seemingly on autopilot, coasting through towns with names like Electric Mills and Scooba and Shuqualak. I was almost to Highway 82—which runs straight into Starkville—when I turned left onto Sessums Road and dodged a litany of potholes for the sake of a “shortcut” back to campus. It never occurred to me that those rural-road potholes didn’t really cut off any time from my trip; I’d convinced myself that the supposed shorter route must surely be the better way.

  Come to think of it, that’s precisely the kind of thinking that will eventually cause a near-fainting spell in the Walmart Lawn and Garden Center after approximately four weeks of a crash diet.

  Funny how that works.

  Eventually I pulled into my favorite parking space at the Chi O house, and as I lugged my duffel bags and milk crates full of clothes and books and heated hair-curling implements to my new room on the back hall, I contemplated how much different and better my college life was going to be now that I wasn’t carrying the burden of all that extra weight. There was just so much to look forward to: I couldn’t wait to see EK and hear all about her summer, I couldn’t wait to share my personal weight-loss story just like people did on those late-night Richard Simmons commercials, and I couldn’t wait to reconnect with my friends and get back in the swing of school and maybe even wear my running tights to rush meetings in case somebody wanted to tell me how good my calves looked and I could pretend like I didn’t know what they were talking about even though I’d probably been standing on my tiptoes and flexing for the better part of fifteen minutes.

  Subtlety has never really been my gift, I’m sad to say.

  Emma Kate rolled into town a couple of days later, and after she put away all her clothes and I stopped drooling over her Eagle’s Eye sweater collection from which I planned to borrow early and often, we set out for lunch so she could tell me about everything the Lord had done at her FCA camps. Naturally, I was super excited to tell her about all my newfound self-discipline and how I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t going to gain back the weight, NOT EVER, YES MA’AM, BELIEVE IT.

  To Emma Kate’s credit, she listened to me very patiently and did not roll her eyes even one time.

  In retrospect it’s interesting to me that our summers were so opposite. Emma Kate nourished her spirit while I starved my body. She was full to the brim with the goodness of the Lord, and I was so stinkin’ hungry that all I could think about was which restaurant might serve some kind of fried-food sampler (a sure sign that my diet was on the verge of imminent destruction). In our own ways, I reckon, Emma Kate and I both had to figure out how to acclimate to Starkville after spending the summer in our respective bubbles. Emma Kate had lived on the spiritual mountaintop for the better part of two months, and while I thought I’d been on a wellness mountaintop of my own, I’d really just camped out in a big ole desolate valley.

  A valley that was unrealistically devoid of foods that are cooked in peanut oil.

  So there we were. I was trying to figure out how to deal with all the food, and Emma Kate was trying to figure out how to deal with, well, all the worldly. To her credit, she seemed determined to pray both of us through our transitions, and it was then—at our first back-to-State lunch—when I became aware that one of Emma Kate’s takeaways from her time at the FCA camps was a tendency to whisper pray. I was a little taken aback by it at first, but since EK is anything but a poser (she is, honest to goodness, the most sincere person I know), I decided that the whisper praying was rooted in a deep well of expectancy abou
t what the Lord was going to do after she offered up her thanksgivings and petitions. It occurred to me that she must be whispering so she’d be able to hear the Holy Spirit at any moment, and honestly, I was borderline fascinated by her new level of intimacy with the Lord.

  I quickly learned that the whisper praying could get awkward in a group, though. One night several of us were sitting around a table together, about to eat supper, and Emma Kate offered up a lengthy, heartfelt blessing with such hushed fervor that I finally cocked one eye open and looked around the table. When I realized that Elise was looking back at me, I silently mouthed a question that seemed increasingly pressing:

  DOES SHE KNOW THAT WE CAN’T HEAR HER?

  Elise shrugged and quickly closed her eyes; I suspect she didn’t want to be caught with her eyes open when the Holy Spirit inevitably showed up.

  I mean, how could He possibly resist all that whispering?

  The adjustments on my end of things turned out to be harder than I’d thought. Since I’d spent most of my summer avoiding food—save those steaks Mama made me eat after my sinking spell at Walmart (well, there was also one night when I was so desperate for something crunchy that I drove to the store and bought a bag of Ruffles and a container of French onion dip and pretty much confirmed once and for all that I am drawn to a simple carbohydrate like a moth to flame)—I hadn’t really worked out how to live with it, which was a way bigger and more important issue. I’d also failed to consider that eating out was a huge part of our social life at college, and what worked for me in Myrtlewood didn’t fare so well in Bulldog Country. It seemed like there was temptation at every turn because, well, there was temptation at every turn: fried broccoli bites at Harveys, fried shrimp po’boys at Oby’s, fried catfish at the Little Dooey.

  Perhaps you’re noticing that “fried” was a bit of a theme.

  But—just as it can be now—the combination of good food and good company was too much to resist, and before I knew it, I was driving in reverse on my personal weight-loss course.

  Seriously. I think I gained eight pounds in four days. In hindsight, Emma Kate’s whisper praying seems like a total nonissue compared to how quickly I backed off my original goal of sharing my weight-loss victory and turned into a walking billboard with an ever-present slogan plastered on the front: “FOLLOW ME IF YOU’D LIKE TO FIND THE CHEESE FRIES.”

  Gradually, though, we settled back into the rhythm of college life, and the days started to follow a predictable pattern: I’d wake up, shower, and amble over to Elise and Tracey’s room for some early morning conversation (to be clear, the conversation was usually with Elise; Tracey has always been a gifted sleeper, so I could sit on her bed, blow-dry my hair, sing an operatic rendition of the national anthem, and maybe even light a couple of sticks of dynamite without disturbing Tracey’s REM cycle). Then I’d walk down to Daph’s room and analyze an Indigo Girls song or two before I’d get ready for class, drive over to Lee Hall to take care of all my academic business, head back to the house, hang out in Wendi and Marion’s room, laugh until suppertime, then find a friend or two and ride around Starkville and sing until we were too tired or hoarse to keep going.

  In retrospect, it wasn’t exactly a high-pressure time of my life.

  But oh, my fickle heart. It was just so stinkin’ restless.

  And the liquid diet, the forty fewer pounds, the smaller-size skirts—well, much to my disappointment, they hadn’t done a single thing to change that.

  For as long as I’ve known her, Emma Kate has been superorganized. She’s really good at figuring out what needs to go where and then sticking to her system. I, on the other hand, tend to put things in places that don’t make sense. Right now, for example, I have lightbulbs stored above the washing machine and toilet paper next to paintbrushes in a laundry-room basket because SURE, THAT SEEMS LOGICAL, and I am apt to get nineteen kinds of frustrated when I can’t find my favorite earrings and then remember, Oh, wait—I’ve been keeping all my jewelry in that piece of pottery next to the oven.

  Emma Kate’s predictability with what goes where was an odd comfort to me when we lived together. For example, I always knew I could find her spare car key on the right-hand side of her bottom drawer, and she faithfully stacked her sweaters in the most orderly way on the top of the built-in shelves on her side of the room. Her Bible, journal, and devotional book lived on the ledge over the top of her bed; her selection of Christian aerobics videos (because OH, YES, that was totally a thing back then) stayed on the second shelf of our TV stand; and the memory verses she’d written on index cards filled the bottom half of her bulletin board.

  Oh, those memory verses—I don’t know if Emma Kate had any idea how often I’d stand next to her bed, look at that bulletin board, and try to figure out how those verses applied to my life. Here’s the one I remember more than any other:

  For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

  PHILIPPIANS 1:21

  Quite frankly, I just wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that.

  I mean, I got the sentiment of what Paul was trying to say to the church at Philippi: your true life is in Christ, not in your selfish desires.

  But did he really have to take it one step further and say, “To die is gain”? SERIOUSLY, PAUL?

  Honestly, that verse annoyed me to no end and flew in the face of everything I wanted to believe about my life. Because to my way of thinking, since it was in fact my life, it should be about my wants and my wishes and my comfort and my plans and my happiness. I didn’t want to miss out on a single thing that I deemed being worth my energy or my time—no matter how potentially destructive that thing might be—and even though I’d said yes to life in Christ when I was fourteen, I was scared to think about what changes would inevitably come my way if I really and truly embraced my own death.

  Does that make sense?

  Let me put it this way: I could look at Emma Kate’s life and see consistent sacrifice and surrender all over it. I, on the other hand, was the queen of compromise, and I LIKED IT THAT WAY. I liked that I had a little streak of rebellion that reared its head at Nickel Draft Beer Night every now and again. I liked that while I was a “good girl,” I wasn’t a Goody Two-shoes. I liked that I lived with a foot on each side of the fence, because that meant my faith never made me uncomfortable. I liked that I could change and adapt and chameleon so I fit right in no matter where I was.

  But Paul, you see, wasn’t having any of that with the church of Philippi—and he wasn’t having any of it with me, either. His worldview was crystal clear.

  Here’s what life is: Christ.

  Here’s what death is: gain.

  Next question?

  So every day—every single day—when I looked over at the bottom right corner of Emma Kate’s bulletin board, those words ran right up against my pride and bucked my strong sense of entitlement that I should get to follow Jesus on my own terms.

  And I have no idea why I thought following my own spiritual counsel was a good idea. After all, I was the same person who’d decided that starving myself for the better part of ten weeks was a winning weight-loss strategy, and clearly that was some prime-time stupid.

  But try though I did, I couldn’t get away from the fact that the Lord was reminding me over and over again—through my sweet roommate, through her perfectly organized bulletin board, through the ways the Holy Spirit would prick my heart late at night when I wondered what real peace felt like—that somehow I was missing out on the joy of my salvation. And whether I liked those nudges or agreed with them or gave them my personal stamp of approval, the bottom line was that if I really and truly belonged to Jesus, He wasn’t going to let me settle for a comfortable, convenient call of my own making.

  Granted, a call that’s comfortable and convenient would be, like, eleventy million times easier.

  But thanks to Emma Kate’s ever-present index cards, there was no escaping Paul’s words and the near-constant reminder that I was going to have to make a choice—a r
eal, grown-up choice—to fully embrace life in Christ by fully embracing the death of everything I thought I held so dear.

  Because no matter how hard I insisted that I knew best, I couldn’t seem to convince God to get on board with my plan to straddle the fence and content myself with lukewarm faith.

  Apparently I’d severely underestimated the power of Emma Kate’s whisper prayers.

  SO A FUNNY thing happens in the South when people finish college.

  Okay. Maybe it’s not funny.

  And maybe it’s not just the South.

  So let me start over.

  Occasionally a particular thing happens in the South and also in other parts of the world when people finish college.

  They get married.

  You’re welcome for the fact that I just took fifty words to say what I probably could have said in five.

  And by the time I finished my undergraduate work at State, I felt like everybody was getting married. Now, I personally wasn’t one of the people who was planning a wedding because, well, I’d never dated anyone seriously, and that’s generally a pretty solid requirement for getting to the part where the guy of your dreams puts a ring on it, as my dear friend Beyoncé would say.

  (I should clarify that Beyoncé and I aren’t really friends.)

  (Well, we were, but then she saw me do the “Single Ladies” dance and was basically consumed by white-hot jealousy. In my defense, however, it is hardly my fault that a French-cut leotard and I go together like rice and gravy.)

  (Oh, I am a kidder who very much enjoys the kidding.)

  Anyway. Yes. Weddings. Many of my friends were planning them. And back when I was young and fresh faced and well versed in the musical stylings of Wilson Phillips, the part that caught me off guard was that in addition to the general state of giddiness that goes hand in hand with celebrating a college friend’s engagement and marriage, there was also a flip side: the inescapable realization that Real Life—it was nigh. It was impossible to ignore that there were all sorts of responsibilities and pressures just around the proverbial corner.