By Brenda Cannon Henley
Our family traveled quite a bit when the children were small. We had moved from Georgia to Tennessee becoming the first family members to relocate away from the Atlanta area. Several of my aunts and uncles thought it was a disgrace to leave family ties. My grandmother really took it badly because we were so close all of my life up until the time my husband and I accepted a job offer from Dr. John Rice in Murfreesboro, TN. She thought we had moved to Siberia because of her experience visiting our farm the first time.

We crossed Monteagle on a bitter, cold, icy January morning, and lo and behold, three big semi trucks had skidded off the roadway and were sitting haphazardly in awkward positions on the shoulders or off ramps of the Tennessee roadway. We had crossed the mountain several times by then and didn’t think much of it.

Mama Cole, then in her 90s, had never seen anything like what she was viewing out of the passenger window of our car. Murfreesboro is the exact geographical center of the state of Tennessee. It is in the heart of the Cumberland Valley, and therefore, the folks get much more snow and ice than metro Atlanta. To say that my grandmother was awestruck would be an understatement. She was out of her habitat and did not like it at all.

What was normal for the Tennessee people was nowhere near norm for a Georgia girl. I have found that people often reject what they don’t know, recognize, or understand. It is much easier to turn an idea away than to investigate it, check on it, or weigh its liabilities or assets.

This is one major reason conflicts arise in church groups, throughout neighborhoods, among business professionals, and in any variety of various personalities gathered together. Leaders and executives find melding a group together from vastly different personalities, backgrounds, and temperaments, and getting a positive outcome is quite the challenge.

A very delicious tall chocolate fudge cake brought the dilemma to my mind again this week. It reminded me of the differences in good people, and even in those who go to church. The youth group was sponsoring an event to raise funding for a camp project. People in the church were to bake their specialty, donate it to the event, and enjoy the fun of bidding in a lively auction to get the dessert that caught their eye.

Mrs. Smith was a new member and probably is a very good cook. I personally believe she saw the dessert auction as an opportunity to set her stakes in the group and shine. She began to advertise on social media and verbally in groups that she would be bringing her “world famous chocolate fudge cake.” Now, mind you, there were some mighty good cooks in that church group, and this was not their first rodeo.

Some of the members questioned the title Mrs. Smith had given her creation and wondered out loud just who had deemed it good enough to be termed “world famous.” Here, we begin to spot a vast difference in human nature. Some cooks would much prefer others bragging on their cooking rather than them stating it was the absolute best.

It didn’t matter one whit to the kids involved. They just wanted to earn enough money to go to camp. It didn’t matter to the folks eating a dessert. They just wanted something sweet. It really didn’t change the course of the direction of the church group. What it did do was vividly call attention to the fact that people are so different.

Just as Mama Cole feared, hated, and envied our move to Tennessee all those years ago, these dear ladies in the church didn’t particularly like one person valuing her contribution more than theirs.

It is actually funny if you think about it sensibly, but that is what makes this old world fun. You are not me and I am not you, but we both are valuable and can be on the same team.

Excuse me for a bit. I must go eat some of the world’s best banana pudding hot out of my oven.

Brenda Cannon Henley can be reached at 409 781 8788, or
[email protected]

[6-3-2019]