trish hermanson - Home

Surviving Wrecks in Our Lives

10/23/2020

I don’t know whether this accident was caused by a student driver or by someone who rear-ended the driver, but either way, someone was crunched emotionally - and perhaps worse. I’ve had car wrecks that wrenched my neck and totaled my car. In a similar way, I’ve experienced crushing times from crashes in my career, my economics, my health, and my relations.
     I’m working through some long-lasting collisions these days. I think it's baloney to believe that "time heals all wounds." What heals wounds is forgiveness of others - and of myself.    If you have long-standing pain from life’s collisions, please know I’m sending a prayer your way that you will heal well.
     Because we’re all fragile.

How to 'Lego' of a Broken Relationship

10/15/2020

A friend of twenty years told me not to be in touch until she decides to connect again.
     It wasn’t a fight that came between us. Not even a misunderstanding. She doesn’t want to get together as we always did because she said she’s “changed a lot.”
     This stabs deep into my heart. Doesn’t she value me anymore?    I struggle to “Lego,” to let go, of a broken relationship. What I mean is, I struggle to let go of a friend who was once warm and vibrant but now has gone as stiff toward me as plastic bricks.
     But there’s nothing I can do because it takes two to tango. If one doesn’t want to dance, then I have to “Lego,” - even if I’m left with a hole in my soul.
     I’m thankful that God’s friendship with me is constant, that he will never leave me. And I wish my friend realized that what we had is worth the effort to revive even as we change. Friendships are priceless, as four-year-old Claire Crosby reminds us in this song.   ***
     Please share. Lego artwork by Nathan Sawaya

The Peril of Tagging

10/9/2020

If you’re getting your kicks out on America’s iconic Route 66, here’s one scene you don’t want to miss - Cadillac Ranch, classic Cadillacs buried nose down in a barren pasture outside Amarillo, Texas. Bring spray paint, and you can be among the thousands who have tagged these Caddies since they were “planted” more than four decades ago.
     When I saw this, I wondered what profound thing I could write about this public art display. Such as: “all our treasures eventually turn to rust,” but who doesn’t already know that? Then when I lifted an aerosol and sprayed a car, the truth smacked me in the face. The wind whipped the paint back at me, and if I hadn’t ducked, I would have become as colorful as the cars.
     The lesson? “What goes around, comes around.”
     So in these days when slanderous political poison pollutes our atmosphere, perhaps I’d better be careful what I say. It might blow back on me.

Why Sift Through Facts & Folly in Fragile Times

10/3/2020

In these fragile times, it would take more faith for me to be an atheist than to believe in God.
     I don’t say this to “dis” my atheist friends whom I respect for their good and hard questions. I say this because of evidence I sifted through. As a young adult, I wondered whether Christianity stood up under the test of science and history, or whether it was just a bunch of Santa Claus at the North Pole.
     I entered into a skeptical study of the historical Jesus, and especially during these times I encourage you to do that if you haven’t. One approach I’ve appreciated is the one taken by hard-core atheist Lee Strobel when he sought to disprove Christianity. Using tests of evidence he learned in earning a masters degree from Yale Law School, Strobel considered categories of proof - eyewitness, documentary, corroborating, rebuttal, scientific, psychological, and circumstantial.
     Strobel says he “read books, interviewed experts, asked questions, analyzed history, explored archaeology, studied ancient literature….”
     In his book “The Case for Christ,” he says, “Based on the avalanche of evidence that pointed so powerfully toward the truth of Christianity, I concluded that it would take more faith for me to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian.”
     That’s where I landed, too, and I’m thankful for this solid ground under my feet when everything on planet Earth is shifting these days. It clarifies my value and purpose.
  To explore on your own, here’s a link to “The Case for Christ” movie.

Clearing the Tangle Out of My Life

9/25/2020

Marie Kondo, the professional declutterer, would smile about all the clearing out I’ve accomplished since Covid has kept me homebound more than usual.
     It started with our chopping down two arborvitae trees in our yard that died. After that I trimmed dead branches deep in an eight-foot-tall shrub; pruned scruffy undergrowth in a thirty-foot-tall blue spruce; and lobbed off thorny limbs from a Russian olive tree that threatened to reach out and grab me.
     Then I moved indoors, culling shelves of books I’ve never read and never will (sorry, you bibliophiles); tossing decades of paperwork (sorry, you archivists); clearing out bric-a-brac (sorry, you sentimentalists); and donating clothes I never wear (you’re welcome, you fashionistas).
     Someday my kids will thank me.
     Everything looks cleaner. And what’s left “sparks joy” in me, as Kondo says our environment should. But I wonder if there’s more going on. Perhaps I’m clearing out the tangle in my life to make room for new growth.
     Because if my surroundings are cluttered, my mind and soul are, too.