I remember when we moved to Olney, Texas. We got here just a few days before Sawyer started kindergarten, and walking that baby into the unfamiliar school cafeteria on the first day was a mighty act of courage on my part as his doting mom. He didn’t know a soul, but he was impressed by the pigs in a blanket that the cafeteria staff was serving for breakfast that morning, and he sat down comfortably next to a little crowd of five year olds he had never before laid eyes on. His teacher was a pleasant brand new grandma nearing retirement, and I watched as he disappeared down the hallway with carefree confidence that whatever was about to happen to him next would be awesome. And it was.
He loved kindergarten and all the grades to follow. He loved his teachers and made great friendships with the kids he went to school and church and baseball and little dribblers and VBS and Friday night football games with. Since he has spent the majority of his life in this small town, on any given Sunday at church, he still may very likely run into that aforementioned kindergarten teacher, or his third grade science teacher who taught him to rap the solar system, or coaches that tried to build his confidence.
At his graduation on Friday night, the auditorium was packed to capacity. People of all ages lined the back walls with no place to sit, and we all watched as this group of kids that we felt we all had a part in raising walked across the stage. Sawyer’s Sunday school teachers and youth leaders were in the crowd. His friends’ parents who have fed him at class parties and made snack bags for band trips and gathered fruit and drinks for cross coutry meets, people whose family albums are probably full of him standing next to their own babies, were in attendance, witnessing not just their own child’s milestone, but my child’s as well. The room was filled with people who cared about the lot of these kids.
I remembered so many of them singing and dancing with me at our Wednesday night program at church through their elementary years. I remembered teaching many of them at VBS, cheering them on at sporting events, celebrating with them as they accomplished great academic feats in their high school careers. I remembered taking many of them to preteen camp, listening to their stories as they rode in my minivan to the hottest spot in Texas where we would play and worship together, holding their sweaty money in my pockets outside the snack shack, waiting for them to need it.
I didn’t feel anything that most of the other people in the auditorium that night didn’t feel. When you live in a small town, there really is a sense of raising all of these kids together, noticing their victories and encouraging them when they face disappointments, watching as they grow and change from huggy little kindergarten boys to men in graduation regalia who tower over you. It’s such a special thing. God pours out a certain kind of grace on a small town community that learns to live together and love each other. It’s a certain blessing from God to know that through all these years, my child has many trustworthy people to turn to, whether it be his sweet kindergarten teacher whom he swore could sing like an angel, his second grade reading teacher who first let him read books that the librarian felt were too hard for him (they weren’t), or his high school science teacher who convinced him he could handle AP Chemistry (he could). The list could go on and on. This town and this church built this boy, and I’m grateful.
There are a great many reasons for people to live in the cities. The great metropolises of the world need Christian people who want to shine the light of Christ in the most crowded spaces. But I would encourage you to also consider the small towns, where the gospel is shared in graduation speeches, where the pastor’s child is free to pray his heart from the high school podium, where a wonderful community of people will help you teach your children what it means to really live alongside each other, not just side by side, but paths crossing over and over in countless ways as the phases of life come and go. There are so many God-given opportunities to truly be involved in people’s lives in a small town, and a lot of it happens in the bleachers at ballgames and during a chance meeting at the local grocery store. God is doing great things here, where the fields are almost ready for wheat harvest, and where the spiritual fields are also ripe. If our Savior’s life on this earth is any indication, the small and lowly places are some of the spots most likely to experience a special move of God.
Now Sawyer is heading to college and dreaming about what he wants his life to be like. He’s going to a big college and has thoughts of trying out city life once he’s finished. But I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere along the way this small town boy decides that he wants to move his family to some humble little place where he will teach his friends’ kids in Sunday school alongside his own. Whatever he chooses to do in the future, I know that he is leaving this small town with a firm understanding of his place in the bigger picture of this world, thanks to God’s unending grace and the steady influence of one glorious little town in Texas.
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