By Jennifer Greene Sullivan
HONK! HONK!
That sound breaks the still, quiet mornings on Old Bethel Road as my middle brother, Douglas, hits the train horn he installed in his boom truck. Most every morning, he honks as he passes our driveway, and without fail, I text him, “Love you! Have a good day.” Over time, that train horn has become more than a loud interruption. It has become a language—one that speaks of presence, protection, and love.
Douglas has been in my life since 1980, when my daddy, Jimmy Greene, picked me up, took my little hand, and carried me to the hospital window to see my baby brother for the first time. I remember looking at that big-headed, rather large newborn and saying, “Let’s put him in the cull bucket, Daddy.” My daddy laughed at my farm girl logic and said, “No, Baby. We can’t cull this one.” From that moment forward, my middle brother has been part of every season of my life—good days, bad days, and the really ugly ones.
We have lived a lot of life together. We both moved away to Valdosta in the early 2000s, only to find ourselves back home on Old Bethel Road a decade later. We have fought, we have hurt each other, and we have walked through seasons that could have easily divided us. Yet, love remained. In 2016, when our daddy and our grandmother died just a week apart, our world shifted in ways we were not prepared to navigate.
In the middle of that grief, my baby brother became the steady one. The rational one. The one who made decisions that were best for our family, even when the decisions were hard. Even now, when life feels too heavy, you can find me on his back porch, laughing at whatever ridiculous Harry Sanders impersonation Douglas acts out that day. Somehow, my very large, very in-charge baby brother is still my safe place.
However, I have witnessed his love most clearly in the moments when he chose to protect me.
One morning in May of 2021, we were both running late for work. Douglas was headed to the logging woods, and I was on my way to Wheeler County High School. We talked on the phone as we often did, his logging truck just ahead of my F-150. As we topped the hill at the intersection of Highway 126 and Middle Ground Church Road outside of Chester, everything changed in an instant.
Douglas slammed on his brakes and veered to the left. I did the same, confused, trying to understand what he could see that I couldn’t. Then his voice cut through the phone with authority: “Jennifer, don’t come this way. Don’t pull up behind me and get out.” There was no room for argument. I turned toward Dexter and took the first dirt road I could find, pulling over to wait.
When he finally spoke again, his voice had changed. “It’s so quiet,” he said. “Too quiet. No one is trying to help. A big truck has crashed over a small car… or what used to be a small car.”
We had just missed a deadly collision.
Douglas stepped into that scene to help, but there was nothing left to do. I drove on to Alamo in tears, grieving for a life I never knew, while my brother stood beside a peanut field, shaken by the silence of what once had been. The Lord had protected us that morning, but my brother had also protected me. He kept me from seeing what he had to carry.
He had done that before on December 3, 2016.
That morning, I found myself on bedrest in the final weeks of my pregnancy with Liam. Our daddy had not answered his phone, so I called Douglas. He rushed to our childhood home. When he called me back, his voice was firm and unwavering: “Jennifer, no matter what, do not come over here! Promise me.” I promised. My brother had found our daddy deceased, and he shouldered that trauma so I would not have to see death.
That sacrifice is love.
Scripture tells us, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13, ESV). Love is not always loud or visible. Sometimes it looks like stepping into something so someone else does not have to suffer. Sometimes it looks like carrying what would break another person.
My brother has lived that kind of love.
I have seen brotherly love again and again. Even at my worst, he has loved me. Even at his worst, I have loved him. Love has covered a multitude of sins between us, just as scripture promises (1 Peter 4:8, ESV). In every season, we have remained—brother and sister, bound not just by blood, but by something deeper.
Just yesterday, Douglas drove his boom truck to our shop off Frank Cook Road to pick up some metal. I watched him make his way across the welding yard and duck his tall frame into my tiny house office. He came in just to hug me and say, “I love you.” I hugged him back and said, “I am so blessed to have a brother who loves me enough to stop and to speak to me.”
Then he left, blowing that train horn as he pulled out of the driveway.
I smiled because now I understand what that sound means.
It is not just a greeting.
It is not just noise.
It is love that has endured, sacrificed, and stayed.
One day, sitting on his porch, Douglas said to me, “I’m so glad I get to do this life with you, Sister. Sometimes, I feel like it’s just you and me.” At that very moment, I understood exactly what Douglas meant.
What a gift it is to love like this. What a blessing it is that Jesus has used the relationship between two siblings to teach me something eternal. I am not perfect, and I never will be. However, I am so thankful that through my brother, I have come to understand the depth of Christ’s love more clearly.
So today, and every day, I listen for that train horn because to me, it sounds like love.
Every time I hear it, I am reminded—torn wings still fly.
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