08/28/2026
What We Give Away
Dear Friends,
Diane graciously invited me to attend the Dallas Wings game on Tuesday night, and just before I met up with her in Arlington, my daughter texted me: “My science teacher told our class Dolly Parton died today!!! I’d love to talk tonight.” While not ultra-passionate superfans, we definitely have an abiding appreciation of Dolly Parton in our household. I loved talking about her legacy with Pailet.
Back to Tuesday night: at some point during the game, “9 to 5” came over the speakers for Crowd Karaoke. The camera panned through the arena, looking for people who knew the words—and nearly everyone seemed to. Young and old, people of different genders, races, and backgrounds sang along. For a few minutes, the whole arena belonged to Dolly. It struck me that this was perhaps the best possible tribute to her. Dolly Parton belonged to everyone.
She was a country music legend, but she was never only a country music legend. She was a songwriter and actress, businesswoman, philanthropist, and feminist icon. She had LGBTQIA+ fans who saw in her a champion of acceptance, and conservative fans who saw in her the values of hard work, family, and faith. Somehow, Dolly managed to speak to all of them.
Part of her gift was knowing what she wanted to give the world—and what she didn't.
Dolly was famously careful about politics and controversy. Rather than spending her public life telling people what they should think, she spent it telling stories, making music, and doing things that brought people together. She didn't need everyone to agree with her in order to treat them with kindness. As Brandi Carlile said this week, “She never wavered on accepting folks for who they were and who they were meant to be.”
There is something deeply Christian about that kind of generosity. Not because Dolly was perfect, or because we should turn a beloved entertainer into a Saint. But because she understood that our lives are measured not only by what we accomplish, but by what we give away.
My own family experienced one of Dolly's more remarkable gifts. Hill received books through her Imagination Library, arriving in our mailbox every single month during his first two years of life. Dolly created the program in honor of her father, who could neither read nor write. By August of this year, the Imagination Library has given away more than 330 million books to children around the world.
Think about that for a moment: 330 million opportunities for a child to discover a story, learn a new word, see a world beyond their own, or fall in love with reading.
Dolly once said, “I always count my blessings more than I count my money. I don't work for money, never did.” And she lived that way. She used the extraordinary resources that came to her—her talent, her fame, her business success—not simply to accumulate more, but to give more.
“Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life,” she said. That may be one of the great spiritual challenges of our time. We are so easily tempted to measure our lives by what we earn, what we own, what we accomplish. When I talked to Pailet about Dolly’s legacy, I told her that I’ll remember how she chose to measure success differently than the rest of the world.
What did you give away? Did you give someone a reason to laugh? Did you make room for someone who felt excluded? Did you use what you had to make someone else's life a little easier? Did you leave behind more love than you found?
Dolly also said, “If I can hold God's attention, I can hold the world's.” I suspect that the reverse is also true: if we spend our lives trying to hold the world's attention, we may miss what holds God's attention. A child learning to read. A person being treated with dignity. A song that makes an entire arena of strangers sing together. Perhaps that is Dolly Parton's most enduring legacy. Not simply the songs, the movies, the rhinestones, or the remarkable career. It is the enormous amount of goodness she chose to put into the world.
May we all leave something like that behind. May we count our blessings more than our money. May we remember to make a life, not merely a living. And may we use whatever gifts God has given us to give something away that will outlast us.
Rest in peace, Dolly. And thank you for the music, the laughter, the books—and for reminding us that a life can become a blessing when we give it away.
Faithfully,
Allison+
