Editor’s Note: This letter from a reader resonated with me, because I too have found home in Johnston County. For the last 20 years of my life, I have settled here, am raising my family here and growing deep roots here. During my tumultuous youth, I often wondered if such a peaceful, contented life was possible, and I have found that here.
The owners of this company have also found home here, have established their business here and have flourished here for the past 10 years of JNOW’s existence.
It got me thinking about how many other people have taken solace in this place, which James beautifully describes in his submission as “sacred.”
Whether you were lucky enough to be born here, came as a child, moved as an adult for better opportunities or came here to settle down and retire — there is something special about Johnston County. It’s people, it’s balance of nature and modern conveniences, it’s long winding country roads where you can still see cows and crops.
As I sit in my comfortable home, looking into my backyard and watching the sunlight flicker around the leaves on the trees that guard my yard, I am thankful.
Thank you James, for sending this in and for renewing that sense of gratitude within me. Welcome home.
Submitted by James Calvin Jones
A certain sacredness exists in this place. I am not sure if that sacredness comes from the scent of wisteria or magnolia or the sight of dogwood blooms — or perhaps the solemn sound of the late-night train.
Perhaps that sacredness comes from all this, all under a sun charioted by a fleet of clouds — the same sun that for one moment in the early morning hours of dawn as watchful eyes gaze, shines through in the form of a cross through the army of pines across from me on Sharpe Street in the town of Selma.
I am not sure from where, or through what, this sacredness comes; I only know that which this sacredness gives, that which I have not known for years, perhaps too many years:
A peace and safety that can only be found in the hope and healing which coming home gives.
I moved to the area in late winter under a waning moon under dubious auspices. Arriving at the place which I now call home at nearly midnight, I was in crisis. After a year of failing to recover from an addiction that again nearly claimed my life, a year which culminated in a final week of extremes too extreme to mention, my oldest cousin reached out. His words were simple:
“Just come on home, buddy.”
Years ago, I swore I would never return east of Raleigh, to the tidefall and certainly to the coastal plains of eastern North Carolina. Too many memories. Painful memories. Regrets.
Sins. But life in the Piedmont in the heart of this Ol’ North State’s capital was no life at all and in fact was the opposite — a slow, painful death.
So when my cousin said those words, without hesitation, I packed my clothes and the few treasured belongings of my mother that I had left, and I left. I moved audaciously, but fearfully, into an unknown future, one which even now as I write this is still unknown. Yet it’s more clear now in the darkness of my life, a darkness that is slowly succumbing to light — all because of this place.
For as long as I can remember, I called Duplin County home, and now as a man closer to forty years in age than he would like to admit, I call Johnston County home — a statement that once written (or even uttered!) gives me pause in this moment.
Here, finally, I am in an environment where healing is possible. Here, nature, with no competition from the spreading concrete of modernity, abounds. Here, nature’s God has a visible presence in the smiling graciousness of people who walk the streets and the churches whose steeples rise to greet the treetops at nearly every corner — one of which has opened their doors to me without the reproach of judgement and the pretense of forced acceptance.
Here, the history of my family — as entrenched in the history of this great country’s civil war as this county — finds new roots, stemming from a legacy that branches from the earliest days of this state.
Yet, as the past often does, I think not backward, but forward and I think, JNOW.
JNOW: Johnston, now. James, now. I even think a statement that I once considered so bold and which I was so ashamed to speak but now say proudly, happily: Jesus, now.
Either I or perhaps a voice from the light breaking in my own darkness tells myself,
“James, here, now, you can get this right. You have all that you need, if you but look” — a faint but resonating whisper that I for so long could hear telling me in which direction to look.
For so long, I had lost faith in myself and even in life. Yet, now, because of this place, and the sacredness which comes forth here, I have rediscovered that faith — faith that hope and healing can only come from one source: Home.
So, to all those who read this: I thank you not for welcoming me home. I thank you for giving me one — one in which I see my health improve and my happiness return as the darkness abides, and the sun rises, reminding me of my direction.
Forward and up.
