Ain’t That A VHIT
By Von C. Howard
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about something most of us have seen but rarely pause long enough to truly consider the dash between two dates on a headstone. A birth year. A passing year. And in the middle, a small line that somehow holds an entire life.
That dash is where everything happens.
It holds the choices we made when no one was watching, the words we wish we could take back, and the prayers we whispered when we didn’t have language for what we were feeling. It carries who we were, who we tried to be, and who we are still becoming. When I think about the dash, I don’t just see time passing. I see growth, struggle, healing, and God working on a person who didn’t always know what he was doing.
If I’m honest, my own dash didn’t begin in clarity or righteousness. Like many people, I had seasons where I knew of God before I truly knew God. I understood church before I understood transformation. My movement from unsaved to saved wasn’t a single dramatic moment that changed everything overnight. It has been quieter than that, convictions replacing comforts, accountability replacing excuses, faith moving from performance into relationship.
I’ve learned that salvation isn’t just something that happened once. It’s something that’s still happening in how I speak, choose, respond, surrender, and grow. That work is still unfolding inside my dash.
When I widen the lens, I see another dash that lives in me, the Black American story I carry. The collective beginning here was in bondage, in a system that measured our worth in labor instead of life. Freedom came legally before it came socially, and progress came unevenly. Even today, I and others navigate spaces our ancestors could never have imagined while facing barriers they would recognize instantly.
Yet what moves me most is not only the pain, but the perseverance. We come from people who survived what should have destroyed them. People who believed in futures they might never see. So, when I speak about overcoming, I don’t mean it as a slogan. I mean it as inheritance. Their dash flows into mine, and mine will flow into those who come after me.
Then there’s the human dash, the distance between who I was in youth and who I am still growing into now. I see younger versions of myself that were quicker to speak and react. I had passion, but not always patience, confidence, but not always wisdom. Life reshapes you. Responsibility, family, leadership, consequences, and grace all teach you.
I’ve learned maturity isn’t having everything figured out. It’s listening longer, judging slower, and choosing differently than you once did. That change is still happening inside my dash.
What humbles me most is this: none of us know how long our dash will be, but each of us is shaping what it means. We can’t change where we started or fully control how it ends, but we do influence who we become in between.
So, I ask myself: Am I growing in ways that matter? Am I honoring what was poured into me? Am I becoming someone my younger self needed and my elders would recognize with pride? Am I living in faith and freedom worthy of the sacrifices that made my life possible?
One day, what will remain of me physically will be two dates and a line. But the meaning of that line is being written now in how I live, love, learn, and keep becoming.
Pay attention to your dash. You are living it. You are shaping it. You are becoming within it.
