The River and the Pulpit

I was raised on a sliver of land wedged between coal dust and the Guyandotte River, where gospel hymns bent the heavy air and every Sunday felt like judgment day. My grandfather stood like granite—a man who built a church with his own hands, but couldn’t make room inside for me.

The river never asked if I was going to hell. It just flowed—muddy, honest, carrying whispers downstream like gossip that softened in the telling.

My family taught me how to fish, how to pray, and how to fear people who didn’t look like us, love like us, or think like us. They were generous with dinner, but stingy with grace. They took me on vacations because someone had to.

When the time came, I packed silence into suitcases. I left for college, then for steel skylines, cafés that didn’t close by seven, and laughter louder than doctrine.

I didn’t get to choose the family by the river, but I chose the ones who see me as sunrise, not shadow. Friends who love like water—constant, soft on the edges, able to slowly reshape everything. Now, I build holidays from scratch with people who memorize my coffee order and call to ask if I’m safe when the news breaks its own heart.

The Guyandotte still runs through those hills, but I am long downstream—on shores where love doesn’t need a pulpit, just a porch and someone to sit beside me.