The Museum of Good Intentions

During our courtship, Maribeth and I spent hours talking about what the future might hold. We still aspired to do meaningful things for the Lord, though we were both in our sixties and had retired from full-time ministry. What might we do together? How could we make the most of the days God might apportion to us? These questions opened some rather creative visions to us.

In the midst of those conversations, Maribeth asked why I had not undertaken a writing project that I had been mulling for several years. I laughed and said, “Honey, I’ve relegated that to the museum of good intentions.”

You know the place. You’ve often visited it, I’m sure, and ensconced some lovely mementos there. Unfinished portraits, rough-hewn statues. Perhaps you dust them from time to time, but you have no serious intention of bringing them out of those polished marble halls to complete the work of your imagination.

Maribeth keeps me mindful of it. When I muse aloud about some project left undone and get that faraway look in my eyes, she will fix me with those penetrating eyes and say, “Is that in the museum, too?”

These weeks of isolation at home would be a good time to walk through your own museum. What treasures languish there? Why not trundle them out the door and see how they look in broad daylight?


Joe Allison writes both fiction and nonfiction, and has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN, with his wife Maribeth and daughter Heather.