Don't get me wrong, this thing isn't always petunias and soap bars. This thing can be hard as nails. Sometimes, it causes the greatest pain you'll ever feel. Even so, it's a pain worth feeling. Don't ask me why. I don't know.

It's too big to write about. But, I'm not going to let that stop me. That's because it's a pretty big thing I'm referring to. The biggest.

Jaden owes his very life to this thing.

Jaden was an abandoned infant born with crack-cocaine in his bloodstream. After his mother's arrest, he was adopted by Claire—sixty-eight-year-old single woman who heard about his situation through a friend.

Claire said, “I know I ain't got forty years to give'im like some young couples, but I'm a good mama, he can have every year I got left.”

Consequently, this "big thing" is the same thing that killed Bob Cassidy.

First, it compelled Cassidy to pull over on Highway 10 to change a woman's tire. A car struck him. It killed him on impact.

I know what you're thinking, "What a senseless tragedy." It wasn't senseless. All thanks to this thing we're talking about.

This thing also prompted Betty to adopt three rescue dogs from a kill-shelter. She brought them home and turned them loose on her twenty-acre farm.

“That's when it hit me,” she said. “I knew had enough room for lots'a dogs.”

So she drove back and adopted several more. Then a few more. Soon, the shelter started giving them to her.

Folks thought Betty was nuts. But she's not. She only looks that way to people who don't know about this thing—which often makes normal folks look like their a few bricks short of a load.

Don't get me wrong, this thing isn't always petunias and soap bars. This thing can be hard as nails. Sometimes, it causes the greatest pain you'll ever feel. Even so, it's a pain worth feeling. Don't ask me why. I don't know.

Something I do know:

this stuff is the fabric the universe. It's the only real thing out there. It's what makes average people sparkle, and ugly skies look pretty. It gives purpose to death.…

He was raised as a foot-washing Baptist and could quote the Old Testament backwards—eyes shut.

Foley, Alabama—I'm sitting in Lambert's restaurant. This is the "home of throwed rolls." Servers stroll the dining rooms, tossing yeast rolls at customers like four-seam fastballs.

A waiter lobs one at me. It hits me square in the teeth. He laughs. So does my wife.

It leaves a mark.

Our waitress brings our plates. Chicken-fried steak, collards, fried potatoes. She wishes me a happy New Year's and asks, "Have you had a good twenty-sixteen?"

You bet your suspenders I have.

While I haven't done anything noteworthy this year, I did get rid of our rusted 1974 mobile home. That was a biggie.

It got hauled to the county dump by a team of highly specialized ambulatory demolition experts with names like, Delmar, and—I'm not making this up—Willie Joe Mavis.

When the lovable single-wide left our property, it bore a yellow banner, reading, “oversized load.”

Willie played “Taps” on the bugle.

Another 2016 highpoint: I kept a New Year's resolution. A little over three hundred days ago, I resolved before King and country to go fishing every weekday at 2 P.M.—even

if only for ten minutes—and if need be, to include beer.

It wasn't always easy, but the Lord provides.

The truth is, this has been the best year of my life. And I'm not just saying that.

Let me tell you about Randy.

We grew up together. He was a kindhearted soul who raised four kids on a millworker's salary. He and his wife were salt-of-the earth folks. They ate healthy, abstained from alcohol, sodas, sugar, and barbecue.

He was raised as a foot-washing Baptist and could quote the Old Testament backwards—eyes shut.

I once watched Randy get caught in a fistfight outside a beer-joint. Randy wasn't drinking. He refused to throw a punch and he got beat to a pulp. His soft-spokeness was something to see.

Randy died this year. Doctors never saw it coming. Nobody did. His wife…