I was that child, you know the one. The one that would take a cardboard box and turn it into wings and jump off the top of the house to see if they could fly. The child that the school had to call their parents every day. The child that would just disappear early in the morning and not come back home until after dark. That was me.

I raised my mother’s blood pressure more than just a few times. I’m sure she wanted to strangle me, in fact I heard her say it several times. I think I am only alive because murdering your child breaks one of the Ten Commandments. I think the Lord put that commandment in there just to protect a few of us that he knew would test our parents patience.

There were five of us kids and I was the “Emergency Room” child. The one, that for no fault of my own…Ok, it was my fault sometimes, ended up in the emergency room on a regular basis. I still do for some reason. However, the Lord has blessed me because I have never had a broken bone. ( I literally just knocked on wood after writing that.)

Ok, wait, I did fracture a vertebrae in my back, but I was an adult…and it was no fault of my own. Well, sorta.

But I am almost certain that if my mother hadn’t been a christian, I would have been the one she sacrificed because she had four more. And I quickly learned that reminding her that ‘patience is a virtue’ when she was mad at me…..was also just as bad of an idea as jumping off the house with cardboard wings. ( I still think that will work somehow)

Her prayers for me never stopped even when I was an adult, they only intensified. I believe that her prayers over me was the safety net that caught me after life had pushed me off of a cliff. From job loss, divorce and many other things, I truly believe it was her prayers and sacrifice that put a hedge of protection around me.

As a child, she was my light in the darkness and now as an adult I see where her light came from, her faith. I know it’s the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that provides salvation, but in my mind, it’s the sacrifice of mothers that leads their children to the Savior.

I know the world says that mothers raise children but in my case she went further and petitioned Heaven on my behalf. I still have those moments in life where it feels like I am standing on the edge of the roof with nothing but cardboard wings, but now when I look down, I no longer see all the mistakes I made, I see grace.

I’m still thankful for those Ten Commandments that kept me alive as a boy, but now I am grateful for the faith that I learned through my mother that keeps me whole as a man. My mother is gone now, but I am truly thankful for when she stood on the Word when I was too busy trying to fly.

My life is a legacy of grace that started in the Appalachian Mountains, by a woman who knew her wildest child needed more than just a good talking too, he needed a Savior. And because she never stopped praying and leading me there, I finally found the one thing that actually lets me fly. Be sure to thank the one who has led you.

( Wait, wings are too small, what about a hang-glider made out of cardboard?)

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Lots of things in the Appalachian Mountains get described as “thick.” The early morning fog, often so dense in a deep holler it seems to swallow the light, is thick. A grandmother’s accent, rich with the history and cadence of the hills, is thick. A pot of soup-beans, slow-simmering on the stove all day until the broth is hearty and clinging to the spoon, is undeniably thick. But one essential and pervasive mountain reality that most folks don’t mention or perhaps don’t even have a name for, is a “Thick Love.”

If you’ve ever walked through that dense, heavy holler fog, imagine that experience as the closest analogy for the type of love I grew up with in the small, brick church nestled on a hill in a sharp curve, Lick Fork Freewill Baptist Church. It didn’t just loosely surround you, like a pleasant, light mist you can step out of. No, this love was a physical presence. It got on you, clinging to your clothes and dampening your skin. It soaked you, sinking past the surface and into your very bones, saturating your perspective. It was a protective, inescapable quilt, and because of its density, you could only see the world, and indeed what was right around you, through its filter.

This Thick Love manifested not just in the monthly potluck dinners, piled high with fried chicken, potato salad and deviled eggs (My favorite) but in the unspoken, unwritten covenants of the community. It was the call that went out when a neighbor’s barn burned, resulting in a flurry of pickup trucks and rough-hewn hands showing up the next morning to start rebuilding, no questions asked. It was the sight of Aunt Dosha, with her perpetually worn apron and a face lined by both hardship and profound kindness, showing up at your door with a pot of chicken-noodle soup when you were sick. It was the fierce, sometimes judgmental, scrutiny the community held you under, because they loved you so much they wouldn’t let you fail without a fight.

This was a love that came with obligations, responsibilities, and a profound, sometimes claustrophobic, sense of belonging. It was the accountability of knowing every single person in the congregation and they knew everything about you. It wasn’t always gentle, and it was often expressed through tough admonishment before it was wrapped in a hug. But like that all-day simmering pot of beans, its flavor was deep, nourishing, and ultimately, what kept you going when the mountain roads of life got too steep.

The Living Sermon

This is where the true Gospel was found, not in the cadence and fire of the preacher’s voice, but in what the old-timers called “the living sermon.” The sermon wasn’t delivered from the polished oak pulpit; it was built into the very fabric of the people’s lives. The real theology of the community was written in the sweat on a man’s brow as he shingled a roof for free, in the smell of casserole baking in the kitchen for a grieving family, and in the sheer presence of people who chose to show up when life went sideways.

The people of the church understood that the word of God became real when it got its hands dirty. The neighbor whose barn burned down had been caught drinking one too many times and had a reputation for cutting corners, yet there were the men of the church, hammer in hand, refusing to let his failure define his future. That refusal to give up on a soul, that was the living sermon of grace. Aunt Dosha’s Chicken-Noodle soup wasn’t just a physical comfort; it was a visible sacrament, a reminder that your physical struggle and pain were as sacred as any prayer request. These actions were the true gospel of accountability and deep, shared life, preached not by a man in a tie, but by a people in overalls and aprons.

This love knew the struggle of a life lived close to the bone. It knew the sting of a coal mine closing, and the gnawing anxiety of a long winter. The Thick Love was the community’s response to the harsh realities of mountain life, a human safety net woven from casseroles, manual labor, and uncompromising prayer. It embraced the whole person: the Sunday saint and the Monday sinner. When the church members held each other under such intense, sometimes suffocating, scrutiny, it was because they knew what was at stake. They were guarding each other’s souls and livelihoods in a world that offered few second chances.

A Hunger for Thickness

For today’s reader, so accustomed to the thinness of digital connection and the anonymity of modern life, the concept of a “Thick Love” can feel revolutionary. We are experts at curating our image, opting for transactional relationships, and retreating into spaces of comfort. We crave community, but only the kind that is easy, convenient, and comes with no obligations. We prefer a light mist that we can step out of when the scrutiny becomes too much.

Yet, there is a profound, almost primal hunger in the modern soul for something with density. We are starved for a love that is inescapable, one that demands our presence and refuses to let us fail. We long for a community that doesn’t just send a sympathetic emoji, but shows up with a pickup truck and a hammer. The Appalachian Thick Love, with all its flaws and fierce accountability, offers a model: a challenge to put down the phones, step out of the curated corners of our lives, and commit to the hard, messy, real work of a shared, physically present life. It reminds us that the most powerful sermons are never heard; they are lived, together, in the thick, sometimes beautiful, fog of a truly connected life.

Without God’s Word, we would be blind to the darkness in this world, it would just be “normal life.” We wouldn’t know the difference. This is the very mission Jesus gave Paul in Acts 26:18 (KJV):

“To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”

Jesus also says in Matthew 5:14–16:

14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

It’s a beautiful theme that runs from the very beginning (Genesis 1:3: “And God said, Let there be light”) all the way to the end (Revelation 22:5), where it says there will be no need for a lamp because “the Lord God giveth them light.” A miner doesn’t just carry a light to see where he is; he carries it to see where he’s going and to avoid the pitfalls in his path. In these pages, we treat the Word of God as our lamp—not just for comfort, but for safe passage. As you read Lamplight, my prayer is that your eyes are opened, your path is made clear, and your light shines steady for all to see.

Keep your lamps lit.

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