Audacious by Beth Moore

Author:Beth Moore [Moore, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Life, Spiritual Growth
ISBN: 9781433690525
Publisher: B&H Books
Published: 2015-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

A Brand New Want To

My earliest memory kicks in around four years old, spinning on a burlap bag-swing hung from a rope knotted around the bicep of an Arkansas pine. I’d twist the fraying rope as tightly as I could, jump on the bag, hold on for dear life and lean my head back while the swing spun wildly in circles. The goal was to keep my eyes open and watch those pine needles turn into a dizzy blur of feltish green. I’d climb off of that bag and stumble around drunker than Cooter Brown. For a minute or two, I’d feel like throwing up and why that didn’t deter me, I’ll never know. I just had a thing for that swing. In the summertime when I’d wear shorts, the insides of my skinny thighs would nearly be sanded raw from clamping tight to the burlap. If I had enough chigger bites, I noticed less.

My family moved to Houston while I was in high school but the green hills and good people of Arkansas had already engraved marks on my heart too deep to undo. In all these years, I’ve never been able to shake my thick accent despite considerable teasing and enduring countless public impersonations. Some of them were pretty good but, frankly, they just did not have the right hair to pull it off. We’re all package deals. If you can rock the accent but can’t rock the hair, then it’s all talk.

Like most regions where the culture runs rich, our colloquialisms were as buttery thick as our accents. Some of our figures of speech were classic Arkansan, others broadly Southern, and still others were by-products of being raised among my wonderful and peculiar kin with deliciously rural roots. I’ll say right up front that I don’t know which figures of speech came from which of those three origins, so don’t go blaming the state of Arkansas for the state of my vocabulary.

Take Cooter Brown, for instance. I have no idea who Cooter Brown was or why he felt the need to drink so much that everybody who did likewise was compared to him. As far as I could tell, Cooter Brown had never been sober for a day of his life. God love him. The issue may have been Mrs. Brown. I just don’t know. The only shiny spot on Mr. Brown’s dull forehead is that apparently somebody was always drunker. I also do not know if the Browns came from anywhere near my great state but they surely did not come from my hometown because my town was nestled in the ample bosom of a dry county. If Brown wanted to get drunk, he was going to have to drive to Hot Springs to do it.

Several of my family’s sayings are firmly lodged in my ongoing vocabulary and I make good use of them multiple times a week. “Stoved-up” is one of them. That means your muscles feel really stiff. I’m not usually referring to myself.

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