No Small Moments - The Long Way Home - July 5, 2026

“The Long Way Home” ©Hubcatstide2026, Traci Peters Hubbard, All Rights Reserved

In this week’s No Small Moments I am sharing with you the “Introduction” to my Book, “The Long Way Home” … I hope it peaks your interest…it is written with a southern flair/accent…

Introduction

Sometimes, you just have to sit in things…like yellow onions sitting in bacon grease with garlic and salt and pepper floating their arrogance through the house like cocky teenagers. People need to slow down and take their time, so they don’t keep bruising the skin of life all around them, especially the spirits of children.

I bet I’ve spent half my time on earth paying attention to caterpillars breaking open their futures trying delicately to pounce upon the world in style with colourful wings that artists paint and sell for millions of dollars on Wallstreet. I hear that Wallstreet is a busy treadmill that gives hope and stillbirth to the world in the same moment. Since I can remember, I have been interested in watching transformations in critters, people, and onions and bacon grease.

Sitting in some thing…some unknown is not an easy task…my mother once said that patience is like picking cotton without fingers. Sometimes, only the blood of a murdered king can grab hold of what is needed for the moment. This morning, I felt the sky begin to tinkle on my shoulders and I remembered watching my brother spray water on a dove with a broken wing…and I knew…like I knew then...I knew in a quiet way, like a baby knows her mother is in the room, that my precious Lord was with me in my soil of fear and somehow, someday, I would emerge a butterfly, blue, iridescent, ready for my truth to unfold.

It’s funny, really, how the clouds of thinking and believing can suddenly change and help you see your foot in front of you and other things that had been shadowed by your last thought. Change causes me to think about everything that has been before and then wonder about what is coming next. Mom said that God created all people as free people...free to think and become...free to wonder except most folks wonder their way into trouble because they’re wondering about things they can’t control. She was good at reminding me about my freedom and how what I set my mind on can lead me to life giving energy or intangible wanderings that can suck the marrow out of my soul.

Sitting in my thoughts always offers two choices. Will I fear where my next step will lead me or will I choose to have faith in my journey? Wandering around in the unknown of things can make a person feel like maybe they were imagining things to be more lost, less hopeful than they are. Maybe, what I see, what my skin sifts like wheat, might just be a piece of fear born in my cells before God ever breathed a breath of life into me. I fear too much except when the rain comes gently like cotton drifts in summer morning rain through willows always weeping for someone.

Once a piece of cotton landed on my outstretched tongue, soft and prickly. Swabbing it out of my mouth, I felt grateful for how a Texas downpour sets my soul on fire for things that are yet to come. Things that just might be. Things that make a person whole from the inside out. rain can change the world and where you are and where you’re not. It cleanses. Feeds. Refreshes. Stirs up. And when I understand the rain in that moment will never be repeated in those exact drops, I learn that life goes on, it can’t help it. Life, like rain, carries on and eventually hits the banks of forever, taking the long way home.

This morning, at the bank of the Trinty River, I decided to tell you a few things about hope and hate, resentment and forgiveness, love and loss, laughter and tears, and staying in the thick of it all like a spoon stands strong in a thick bowl of chili. Mostly, I want to tell you how holding on to the wrong things holds a person prisoner to all their fears and keeps them blinded by anger to the life that’s covered in cobwebs just waiting for them to live. I want you to know that letting go of something can heal your soul and the souls of those thirsty to be loved by you. I watched this kind of healing happen just as sure as I’m watching my blue river run through the heart of Fort Worth.

My name is Traci, and a long time ago, a blind black paraplegic psychic told my mother that she could see me writing in my bedroom. I was five at the time Ms. Bell predicted my future. Later, my friends agreed with Bell’s insight and encouraged me to be a story weaver. Turns out, that’s what I ended up doing in a different sort of way. I’ve decided it’s time to tell my story about my mother, me, and the larger circle we became in birth and death. Our story is a true tale about how other people’s lives, sometimes our own, tried to swallow us whole, and how the current of our formidable divine feminine orb we named the “Hubcats” kept us all from drowning while teaching us how to rise from the ashes. The Trinity River of three generations flows through our cells just as sure as Fort Worth’s Trinty River continues to flow, soothe, and sometimes flood.

One thing I know for sure is that no one can control when and how the rain falls, and where the water decides to go, but we are free to decide what to do with her tide.