What Do I Want To Be?

As I am writing this, it is the week of Thanksgiving. I am moving. My wife and I coordinate the Operation Christmas Child Dropoff Center at our church, which means we are working the last two hours of dropoff and then delivering the last 100 shoeboxes to the regional center. Yesterday was church, shoebox collection, and a church business meeting. Poppa is tired. But blessed.

It dawned on me when I woke up this morning: A3 posts are due today!

EEEK!

What to write about, Lord? The answer was felt deep in my soul: be a blessing. I guess God knows I need simple truths spelled out for me.

When I hear the term be a blessing, I think of my dear writer friends Dee Dee and Cathy, whom I met at Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference (You know, the big event with the even bigger title) years ago. My first time there, I was waiting in the cafeteria line, and the lady, Cathy, in front of me struck up a conversation. We laughed and cut up through the salad bar, the entrée choices, and the dessert bar.

I later found out, as we went our separate ways, Dee Dee asked Cathy, “How long have you known Carlton?”

She replied, “Just met him there in the cafeteria line.”

Such is our history. Since then, we have laughed our way through many a conference.

Dee Dee and Cathy began making funny videos at BRMCWC (WXYZ) years ago, calling themselves “Two Peas in a Strange Pod.” Their motto is “We just want to be a blessing.” It hit me this morning—shouldn’t that be our goal as Christian/inspirational writers?

I certainly want to people to read my pieces (come on, y’all), but I want my readers to be blessed in some way. Maybe a chuckle at my misadventures, maybe a smile from a memory I have shared, maybe a scratch on the head from thinking, “Carlton actually did that?”

I realized a long time ago that God hasn’t called me to write profound, literary masterpieces. He has called me to be a blessing by sharing the blessings He has blessed me with (Yes, I was trying to see how many times I could use the word “bless” in the same sentence).

So, continue reading here for more crazy stuff from me. And join us at BR549—I mean, BRMCWC—for the misadventures of Dee Dee, Cathy, and that wacky third pea, Carlton.

After all, we just want to be a blessing.

Carlton Hughes wears many hats. By day, he’s a professor of communication at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College. On Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings, he does object lessons and songs with motions as Children’s Pastor of Lynch Church of God. In his “spare time,” he is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Chicken Soup for the Soul and several devotional books from Worthy Publishing—Let the Earth Rejoice, Just Breathe, So God Made a Dog, and the soon-to-be-released Everyday Grace for Men. Carlton and his wife Kathy have two college-age sons, Noah and Ethan. He is on the planning committee for Kentucky Christian Writers Conference and is a year-round volunteer for Operation Christmas child.