trish hermanson - Home

Why Pick Up the Fork in the Road?

3/2/2021

“If you come to a fork in the road, pick it up,” baseball great Yogi Berra said. I’ve pondered this wisdom through the years as we moved to new cities where new jobs and new neighborhoods brought new choices - forks in the road.
     Today with COVID, sometimes I feel like choice has disappeared and I’m trapped in an eternal waiting room. Waiting to give hugs to family members. Waiting to see friends. Waiting to shop and travel freely. Waiting for life to begin again. I don’t see forks in the road, only blockades.
     But perhaps I’m missing some opportunities - the forks in the road I can pick up. Like calling a friend. Or sending a card to someone who crosses my mind. Or speaking practically, even cleaning the smudges off the refrigerator.
     I don’t have to wait for the future for opportunities. The future is the next moment TODAY.

My Blizzard Miracle

2/19/2021

This week I called my friend Dale in Texas where her city is in a deep freeze. No answer. So I shot up a prayer, asking God to bounce a miracle down to her. Her situation reminded me of when my young girls and I were trapped in a blizzard. We were lumbering along a lonely Colorado road in our station wagon at twilight when we hit ice that spun us into the ditch next to a frozen lake.    Stuck.
     An SUV approached and stopped. A man in a parka hopped out and ran down to us while I cracked opened my window.
     My mouth dropped open. “Are you Frank…?”
     He grinned. “I’ll get in front of the car and rock it.”
     The car inched out of the snow bank and backed up the slope, and the man jogged easily back to his SUV and drove off.
      “Who was that?” my girls asked.
     I exhaled. “We had a world-class rescue. That was none other than Frank Shorter. He launched America’s running craze when he won the Olympic gold medal for the marathon and the silver four years later.”
Some may call this a coincidence that Shorter arrived when I needed help, but I think, Who made the incident “co?”
     So when I shoot up a prayer for Dale, I’m asking God to send a miracle her way, perhaps even before she gets an S.O.S. off our lips.
I'm reminded that I scratch my head about unanswered prayers, but forget the “unprayed answers” that come my way.
  Have you had any?

Is God a Vending Machine?

2/12/2021

Recently seven members of my family have suffered from COVID, a daughter is scheduled for surgery, my toddler grandson broke his wrist, another grandson is starting vision therapy, and I’m being treated for cancer. In times like this, I wish God were a vending machine and I could insert a coin, punch a selection, and out would drop whatever I ask for.
Some folks tell me that’s all I need to do. Just pray the right prayer, or pump up enough faith, or live a good enough life, or name it and claim it. Then the divine will be my genie-in-a-bottle and grant my wishes.
This is not the deity I know. He’s completely good. And wise. And powerful. But He’s not my celestial butler. “God is not the supporting actor in my life movie,” says Dr. Michael Horton, a California professor. “I have been cast as a player in His unfolding story of redemption.”
That redemptive story is way bigger than my story, and the all-supreme is not my Mr. Fixit. His renewal of all things may or may not include what I hope for and on my schedule. What I want may be shortsighted. So I still pray, but I can’t presume how God will answer. It may be different than I ask. And difficult as it is to grasp, the trials that come my way may bring heaven’s mercy in disguise, as Laura Story sings here

'Trash Doesn't Lie' but Reveals All

2/1/2021

As we enter Black History month, I recall discovering this pottery shard when Duane and I explored the ruins of a sugar plantation on St. Croix Island in the Caribbean. With the push of a shovel, this piece of history rose to the surface.
     Notice the finely tailored people on this fragment from a dish? They are like the Danish family that once lifted silverware to eat from this plate. But if anything broke, their slaves buried it along with other garbage at the edge of the plantation.
     “Trash doesn’t lie,” archaeologist Michael Prouty says. This particular piece reveals a time when there were ten slaves per each white person on St. Croix. These slaves rebelled in 1848 and gained their freedom, while some American whites still maintained their “Gone with the Wind” fantasy of plantations run by “happy” slaves.
We’re more evolved and enlightened now, right? Maybe not. Racism still unearths its ugly head when new fringe groups embrace white supremacy. When anti-Semitics terrorize Jewish neighborhoods. And when some folks label all refugee seekers, including women and children, as crooks. I don’t embrace these beliefs. Yet sometimes to elevate myself, in my mind I subtly put down others who differ from me. Isn’t that the essence of racism?
     Evolution and enlightenment haven’t worked. You’d almost think we have the shards of a broken nature to deal with.

I Got Cancer

1/28/2021

You’d think this toppled tree is dead. But look above me - a green canopy nourished by a massive root system. I’m particularly aware of my need for a deep root system these days since I got toppled by a diagnosis of cancer.
     Prognosis? No treatment plan can guarantee my physical healing But I have a hundred percent guarantee of being well spiritually if I draw upon a healthy root system instead of listening to that old root killer “fear.” I’m going to die some day anyway - maybe from cancer, maybe from something else. Why fret?
     So I’m pursuing the medical treatment that seems best for my situation, and it’s helping. But I’m also heeding the advice of cancer survivor John Piper who said, “We waste our cancer if we think that ‘beating’ cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.”
     Why is that? Because not only is Jesus the one who sustains me in the present, he is the door keeper to my future. After all, he nicknamed himself The Way. For those who follow him, death is the passport from this marred world into the perfect world God always intended for us.    So I’m sinking my roots into the eternal soil of God to draw up nourishment.
     That’s a great way to live - and to die.
   ***
  I enjoy exchanging messages with all of you, but as I navigate through this, please understand I may not have the bandwidth to respond. Thanks.