Silo Sorrow and Splendor

The Day I Really Wanted to Send a Postcard

Magnolia Market is a mini-town, an enchanting experience, a picture of rustic whimsy that sits in the middle of old Waco, TX and emerging Waco, TX but really, Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Market is doing its own thing entirely.

I’ve been to a few places like the Magnolia Market, but usually they’re too polished. They want rustic, but they’ve shined off all the rough edges, sanded out the splinters, and WD-40-ed all the squeaks away, which probably makes everything feel clean and safe, but it also invites the sense of ‘fake’ to the fore.

In such situations, I find myself under-enchanted.

Magnolia Market has touches of the perfection thing - absolutely - but it also works hard to ‘let go and let be.’

Indeed, the strong, soaring cottonseed silos are the centerpieces of the experience. Their deep brown rust running across their white peeling paint declares the kind of authenticity that the Magnolia Market centers in the experience.

(These once held tons of cottonseed, which were then turned into cottonseed oil and meal. The oil proves a great cooking oil and salad dressing, among other things. The meal is an excellent fertilizer)

And while the main gift shop has an expansive amount of chic options for the contemporary lifestyle, a quick glance at the old, soaring ceilings above makes clear that it’s been a good decade since anyone swept the cobwebs or bothered to consider the many grime-attracting nails protruding at various angles.

To be sure, there are times when it becomes a little too perfect, but if a mini-vintage wiffle ball field in the middle of the Magnolia experience and sparkly clean bathrooms blasting frigid A/C on a 105-degree day is the issue then, well, I’ll deal with a touch of too-much perfection.

(Magnolia with the polish on this one, Logan with the whimsy)

My mom would love this place, was the thought that repeated in my head over and over as I walked the Magnolia Market last Saturday for my inaugural visit to the booming attraction.

At one point I neared the front counter and saw colorful Magnolia Market postcards for sale - complete with a stamp already placed on them. It was another small perfection, this one received with welcome.

What followed, however, felt inexplicable since I knew I was not going to buy one.

I reached out, took a postcard, and stared at it under the soaring ceiling fans and wafting cobwebs.

What am I doing?

Then my body told me.

A lump arrived to my rapidly heating throat and tears began falling without invitation.

I was suddenly consumed with the idea that I’d love to buy this postcard, write a few notes about Magnolia, and then mail it my mom - perhaps hinting at all the Christmas gifts for her sitting at the bottom of the large woven bag handed to me when I had entered the store.

Wait till you see some of the treasures here, Mom! Right up your alley.

But such a mailing has not been possible for nearly five years now.

Which made everything about Magnolia feel not perfect or imperfect but more like thousands of lovely people and lovely things and lovely echoes of a proud agricultural history…

…and even so I all I wanted was a quiet bench.

And tissues.

And whatever kind of mailbox that could get a postcard to mom.

I wanted to tell her “I love you,” and let those words reverberate through our decades together that knew days of polished perfection that were not true, seasons where the quiet cobwebs hung unspoken, and years when nothing was fancy, but it was strong, soaring, and it nourished us both deeply.

Of course, enchanting as Magnolia is, there are no magic mailboxes of the sort I sought.

I do trust, however, that Mom’s in a place she can nevertheless hear me.

And I also trust that place is not so perfect that none of us would really want to be there.

I trust it’s a place that knows how to weave the peeling paint, rusty nails, and unspoken cobwebs into some kind of symbiotic redemption that honors both the pain and the wholeness.¹

In fact, over the years I’ve come to believe that when people utter the prayer “on earth as it is in heaven,” what they are asking is - living for, even - is for that kind of rare redemption to unfold today.

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A Note about Today’s Piece:

1. Last week I told you that this week I would tell the story of my book writing process since the Small Stories about Big Things book arrives to Amazon Kindle on September 12 (pre-order available!) and paperback on September 26. But that piece is taking a little longer than expected :)

2. Plus, my writing teacher - Valley Haggard (whose kind endorsement graces the front of my book) - reminded me regularly that when it comes to writing, “Follow the tears.” When tears arrived last weekend, it was quite clear what needed to happen.

1. It seems centrally important that when we read about Jesus rising three days after being on the cross, his scars are visible (John 20:20, 27).