2-27-18 SWEET SPOT

When we built our house we added one more bedroom than we needed: A guest bedroom that could stay clean and ready for company. That room has housed a lot of people through the 2+ decades we have lived here. Sometimes people snuggle down in that antique oak bed for a night or two. It is a blessing to be able to give guests a private place to rest. More often though, our guests have stayed weeks or months at a time. Random brothers and sisters from our eternal home who needed a place to lay their heads for a while, and perhaps a regular home cooked meal. High school kids whose homes were less than hospitable sometimes, college students, foreigners who knew no one else in America, a couple homeless people I met in laundromats or when I taught the gospel of Christ in the jail, and more than a few songwriters. 

One songwriter friend who lived here for quite a while was my friend I will refer to as K. He had real talent as a singer/songwriter and guitar player, but not so much talent in the ability to manage or earn a living. There isn't much by way of a paycheck for us singer/songwriters, if that's all we are willing to work at. 

K was bright, but probably too bright for his own good. Either ADD or too much weed smoking in his youth had made it difficult for him to complete tasks and pick up a paycheck. Not only did we provide a bed and meals and other comforts, he drove our old red truck. We received parking tickets in the mail well after K had moved on, but that's beside the point.

K taught me a few meaningful and pivotal things, and I appreciate him for that. One was the physics behind harmonics on guitar. Halfway through the string, between the nut and the bridge, is the sweet spot, where the harmonics are perfect. Armed with that new found information I wrote the song Across the Wooded Hill, still one of my favorites, though it's a bit too high for me to comfortably sing nowadays. He also taught me that, like guitar strings and baseball bats and golf clubs and tennis rackets, every human also has a sweet spot, some little thing that is just perfect. "It doesn't matter how flawed, or unattractive, each person ever born has a sweet spot. "Your Kate, for instance: That platinum streak in her thick dark hair is a kiss from heaven. Her sweet spot." Carla told me once that Annie's nose was her sweet spot. "I think Annie has the perfect little nose" she told me one day when Annie was in Jr. High. To be honest, I hadn't really considered her nose before that, and when I actually looked, I thought Carla was probably right.

Most people don't realize where or what their own sweet spot is. But if you plant the thought in your head tonight, you will likely start noticing all sorts of sweet spots on other people tomorrow.

Physical sweet spots.

Personality sweet spots.

Spiritual sweet spots.

Emotional sweet spots.

It's good to be aware of them. One day, when you are thinking that you are never going to be able to survive the adolescence that sprouted from what was once your beautiful, perfect little baby, you will happen upon their sweet spot and you will have that almost imperceivable little flash of hope come floating down upon your weary head. Like the batter who just keeps striking out, and every time he swings he stares at his bat like it is not doing its job.

Then comes that one pitch where he swings and the ball finds the sweet spot, right there near the thickest part of his bat. The ball goes flying out over the head of the center fielder as he runs to the fences. All the way out to the horizon, it seems. That sweet spot can keep us going for a long time to come, once we find it.

Go on, try finding a sweet spot. 

They're all over.