Fearless Faith

For the past 26 years an extra rider has accompanied us in one of our vehicles. It is in fact a small cartoonish plastic cricket from a fast-food children’s meal ordered from a drive thru in mid-summer 1988. There is no rhyme or reason to have kept it other than to humor our kids and whimsically reflect on our time together. Long after the cricket’s built-in chirp faded. we still found ourselves reluctant to give it up. It had grown on us. Through no real effort on our part, we had an honest to goodness talisman on our hands.

One definition of a talisman is any small object or item we consider...