Think on Good Things exists to simply share positive, funny, and uplifting stories and information of people, places, and things. Thinking on Good Things can provide a boost for any day! I hope you enjoy!
Let’s all be kind to each other today…. because you know what? We all carry silent, invisible weights. Even though our days are full of blessings – we also all have pains. Sometimes, a person will drop what they are doing and just freeze, stopped dead in their tracks by a sudden wave of emotion, and the people standing right next to them won’t have a single clue why.
I used to have a friend whose favorite catchphrase was, “That’s so weird,” whenever she encountered a person or emotional reaction or a situation she didn’t quite understand. I loved her dearly, but I always winced inside when she said that phrase. Just because a person’s behavior or feelings are unfamiliar to our own lived experience doesn’t make them “weird.” It usually just means we don’t know the story behind it…we don’t understand. We don’t always know what hurts, what fears, what pains a person is carrying behind their smiles.
A Quiet Moment of Reflection
Take last night, for instance. If you had walked into my kitchen, you would have seen a grown woman standing by the cabinets, holding an empty cardboard tube with tears in her eyes. To a stranger, it would probably look weird, but to me, it was a quiet moment of unexpected reflection.
When my parents passed away, I made the decision to move into their house in Green Forest. Even though I had never lived in this house before, it felt like I had… because in many ways, it is the house I grew up in.
When I was a little girl, Mother and Daddy sat down together and carefully drew a house plan that Daddy then built between Hattieville and Old Hickory, Arkansas. Since that house and this house are basically identical, this home has always felt to me like the house I grew up in.
After Mother passed away—she was my last surviving parent—I found joy in the little daily reminders left behind in her space. After moving in, I definitely worked to make the house feel like mine, but I also loved seeing the things that she had left, that she had used. They were precious connections to her, and I treasured each one of them.
But… she’s been gone for almost four years now—and slowly, inevitably, those daily physical reminders, those physical connections are getting fewer and farther between….and I miss them.
The End of the Supply
Last night, I was getting ready to bake some Sister Schubert cinnamon rolls. I was excited to try them! I turned on the oven and started eagerly reading through the instructions. They said to cover the pan loosely with aluminum foil…
…so I walked over to this really cool, custom dispenser that Mother had built into her kitchen cabinets for wax paper, plastic wrap, and aluminum foil. I reached up, grabbed the edge of the foil, and pulled.
As it unrolled, I pulled up a bit preparing to tear it off… but instead, it fell free. It was the end of the roll.
This was a roll of aluminum foil that my mother had bought, and taken out of the box, and placed on that holder when this was still her house. I had just used the very last of her physical supply.
It stopped me for a moment, and it made me remember. I stood in my kitchen holding that piece of aluminum foil thinking about how much she loved her house, how much she loved to cook, how much she loved to smile and laugh, how much she loved to give to others, and about how much she loved me…and I missed her. Tears came to my eyes, and I stood there in the quiet kitchen holding that empty roll for a minute, just treasuring the moment—the physical connection to the mother who birthed me, who loved me, and who worked so hard to build a happy life for me…
The Things That Never Run Out
…and that’s what’s really important. The love she and Daddy poured into me, the things they taught me, the deep joy they wanted for my life, the prayers they prayed for me, the examples they set for me. Those things never go away. They never run out.
So…while it could have definitely looked weird for me to tear up over a box of aluminum foil last night—it really wasn’t. It was just a daughter loving her mother and savoring the memories of the times they shared together.
You really never know what’s going on in a person’s mind and what fears and hurts and pain they carry… because we all have them. So let’s all just be kind today. We are all in this together. ❤️❤️❤️
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” — Ephesians 4:32
Have you ever had those moments where you realize the world is so much smaller, and that we are all so much more beautifully interconnected than we realize?
For as long as I can remember, I have been a collector of hidden connections… not things you can hold in your hand, but all the little moments, the little pieces of treasure that life routinely drops in our path.
I think it stems from how I was raised and the journeys life has taken me on so far. My parents and I moved to Carroll County, Arkansas, when I was a little girl… and I suddenly felt so far away from everyone and everything I’d ever known. Before our move, we had lived in a safe, cozy, loving cocoon of family—and suddenly, we knew absolutely no one. It made the world feel kinda big, exciting, scary, lonely, and unpredictable all at once.
Very quickly though….I began to find some connections…and as it turned out, our new county wasn’t such an unfamiliar place after all! Daddy told me that my great-uncle Ira had once worked in the Berryville Post Office building—not for the postal service, but in the county agent’s office. How neat! To this day, I still think of him almost every time I drive by that beautiful old building – and I enjoy the connection.
When I started school in Green Forest, I found out that it wasn’t a place without ties either; my cousin Sarah had graduated from high school there in 1951. Ironically, two of her classmates from that graduating class were sisters, Eula and Ramona, who both ended up becoming our neighbors. Ramona has since passed away, but her sweet son and daughter-in-law are still my neighbors today, and Eula lives just across the fields from me. (Isn’t that cool?)
Those early experiences taught me a lesson I haven’t forgotten: There are always connections around for us to find… and they can help to comfort us and make anywhere feel like home.
I am forever grateful to my parents for diligently emphasizing to me that it’s important to be friendly, to respect others, to appreciate blessings, to strive to approach each day with joy… and to develop and maintain a curious mind that is always eager to learn. Because of that, I see life every day as an incredibly beautiful, varied tapestry that is never truly finished. We go through our days collecting tiny pieces of information, stories, memories, interactions, and moments…things to think about and then carefully tuck away to remember…always looking for new things to connect them to…
Sometimes, the connections come quickly and click right into place. Other times, it takes decades for a memory to find its match. But when the threads finally tie together, it is such fun!
Let me give you an example:
When I was a little girl, we listened to music a lot—either in the car on our fancy new 8-track player (lol) or in the living room on our big, wooden console stereo cabinet. (Google them if you don’t know—they were huge and very cool…at the time! 🙂 ) We spent a lot of time listening to southern gospel albums, comedy albums, classic country music (well… it wasn’t classic then, but it is now!), and more.
One of the many artists we enjoyed was Merle Haggard. His voice would drift out of that wooden console cabinet singing “Mama Tried,” “Okie from Muskogee,” “Silver Wings,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” and “If We Make it Through December.” Great singer—he had such a smooth, relaxed, rich voice…
Years later, I was in college and living with Mel and Judy Tillis, taking care of their sweet little daughter. One morning when I woke up and went sleepily upstairs for breakfast, I found Merle Haggard sitting in the living room visiting with Mel. I said hello and quickly left them to their conversation, but I was really excited to tell Mother and Daddy that I had met Mr. Haggard. It created a wonderful new connection—linking that real-life morning to those childhood days listening to his music with Daddy.
A few years ago, another unexpected tie surfaced on a road trip. A friend and I were driving on Highway 69 across Oklahoma. I glanced up at a road sign and at the last minute saw an exit for “Checotah.” I immediately flipped on my turn signal and tapped the brake to slow down and exit the highway. My friend looked at me curiously, wondering why we were detouring. I smiled and told her we had to take a minute to “drag main” through Checotah because it was Carrie Underwood’s hometown! She asked me how on earth I knew that, and I told her I had learned it from a song. I opened up Spotify and played “I Ain’t in Checotah Anymore” as we rolled through town. Such fun!
When we stopped to get a soda, we started digging into the history of Checotah (population 3,110) a little bit…and we found another small connection: Merle Haggard had ties there also. His parents, James Francis Haggard and Flossie Mae Harp, had lived and farmed in Checotah before moving out to California, where Merle was born. I tucked what we had learned away in my mind… another random bit of history collected.
Fast forward several years…and the connections really start to get more interesting. Working in and living near Harrison, I often drive over to Newton County, Arkansas. It’s a beautiful part of the state—and a great “day trip” destination. I love to eat at the Ozark Cafe or the Cliff House Restaurant. I love to drive through Lost Valley, Steel Creek, and Ponca just to soak in the calming beauty of nature and take a few pictures. I love to park and watch the elk. There is so much to see and do there…it’s good for the soul!
A few years ago, while I was in Ponca taking pictures one day, I walked over to explore an old historic cabin sitting near the intersection of Highways 43 and 74, not far from the Ponca low-water bridge.
It was fascinating! The National Park Service’s historical marker about the “Beaver Jim Villines Boyhood Home” explained how Abraham Villines and his children were among the earliest pioneer families to settle in the Buffalo River Valley, carving a home out of the wilderness back in the 1850s. I snapped a photo of the sign and took some pictures of the old cabin, admiring the hand-hewn logs, thinking about the hardships of the day-to-day lives of the family who built it, and feeling a deep appreciation for all the history preserved there. I tucked this new information back in my mind and went on enjoying the day.
Fast forward again! At Harrison Schools, I work with a friend named Matt Piper. Like me, Matt is greatly interested in history, family, and ancestry. One day, he mentioned a song to me that was written about a member of his family—his great-great-great aunt Martha Frances Arizona Belle “Zona” Villines Harp. (I absolutely LOVE her name! Stop and say it out loud to yourself. Isn’t it great?)
The song is titled simply “Grandma Harp,” and it was written and recorded back in 1971 by country music artist Merle Haggard as a tribute to his maternal grandmother. I loved learning this! (In case you’re now wondering—that makes Matt a second cousin, three times removed to Mr. Haggard. Very cool, Matt!!!)
After work that day, I was excited to hear the song, so I pulled up “Grandma Harp” on Spotify and listened to it a few times on my drive home. It was a B-side recording – but it’s actually been covered by a few other artists…and I can see why. It’s a simple, sweet, and incredibly loving tribute. In the spoken-word prologue, Mr. Haggard reflects on how his grandmother lived through an era of great historical and social change—from horse-and-buggy days to the very first automobiles, to seeing a man walk on the moon and living through two world wars…all while “rearing a decent family out of poverty and loving the same old Grandpa for seventy years”.
The lyrics made me thoughtful about life, our heritage, and the lasting impact we leave on others… As I drove home listening to the song, all of these separate stories suddenly clicked.
The voice coming through my car speakers was the same voice I used to hear on my parents’ record player as a little girl in Hattieville, Arkansas. It was the same man I had met briefly as a college student in Branson. And the “Grandma Harp” he was singing about carried the maiden name Villines—relatives of the pioneer family whose historic log cabin I had explored and photographed in Ponca… and the same family with connections to the little town of Checotah, Oklahoma, and to my coworker Matt in Harrison.
There really are beautiful connections all around us every day.
It was a beautiful reminder to keep our eyes wide open and our hearts curious. We are never truly strangers in a new place, because if you dig just an inch below the surface, you’ll find that the stories of our lives are all quietly walking down the exact same paths. What a beautiful reminder that we are all a little more connected than we think.
Listen Along: If you like, you can listen to Merle Haggard’s “Grandma Harp” on YouTube. Take a moment to listen to the spoken-word prologue at the beginning—it is just lovely.
Have you ever discovered a surprising connection to a piece of history, a place, or someone from your past right in your own backyard? I would absolutely love to hear your story!
If you enjoyed this reflection, please consider following my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lisa.carlon.5 where I share photos, porch updates, travel stories, reflections, and quiet moments from our beautiful Ozarks.
