All Categories - trish hermanson

Getting Swept Away?

9/19/2019

I did it again - I allowed myself to get swept away in busyness. Why do I do that?
     I don’t have the excuse of obligations of someone like Eugene H. Peterson, a world-renowned author and lecturer. Yet even with his full schedule, Peterson admitted he sometimes got caught up in busyness simply “because I am vain. I want to appear important. Significant.”
     Ouch. Do I bloat my schedule to try to look important?
     Vanity isn’t the only thing that tricked Peterson into busyness. He said that sometimes it was laziness. “I indolently let others decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself.”
     I’ve done that, too, trying to please others by doing what THEY think I should do instead of setting boundaries.
     So instead of getting swept up with busyness, I want to make some sweeping reforms in my thinking and my schedule. Otherwise, my life may be as futile as Shakespeare described: “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
     What a tragedy that would be.

My Miracle Friend Jerry

9/13/2019

If my friend Jerry had been been born with Down Syndrome a century ago, his life expectancy would have been ten, but instead, a group of us recently celebrated his fifty-second birthday by slicing into his favorite cake, chocolate-cherry.
     Instead of a sheltered life, Jerry’s a rock star wherever he goes. At the rec center, he wears his Incredible Hulk t-shirt that says “I’m Kind of a Big Deal,” and he fist bumps others as he cycles under the instruction of his personal trainer. He keeps his own apartment with the help of a personal assistant to nag him about housekeeping, and he worked for nearly a quarter century at a supermarket until he retired.
     As I observe Jerry’s full life, my heart breaks that most parents who discover prenatally that their child has Down Syndrome still choose to abort. They do so because of “misinformation of the ancient past,” says Dr. Roger Ladda of the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. They don’t understand that “survivability and quality of life has been transfigured.”
  So at his party as I watched Jerry read aloud the well wishes in his stack of cards, I was filled with gratitude to know this super hero who really is a big deal. He’s turned his malady into “Up Syndrome,” and reminds me that often I understand the most from those considered the least in this world.

Partying! with Down-and-Outers

9/4/2019

I’m helping dish up a picnic in the park to several hundred down-and-outers: a woman with a burn covering half her face; a man with all his possessions in a Sears shopping cart; a woman who was homeless for seven years before squeezing into a crowded apartment; bikers and their babes; a woman with one hand.
We serve a banquet on tablecloths with centerpieces that say “You Are Cherished.” We hand out four kinds of meat, corn on the cob, salads, chunks of watermelon, two kinds of beans, cake and more cake. “Yes, come back for seconds and thirds,” we say, “then take some with you to wherever you rest your bones tonight. Let your kids blow bubbles and run in the grass, and take a stuffed animal home to hug, whether you’re six or sixty.”
     If I swallow my pride, I admit I’m one of them, scarred and broken by what life has done to me or what I’ve done to myself. And Jesus invites us to come for seconds and thirds and to party in the park of His life.
     Who can turn down a banquet like that?
     ***
     More information about Mean Street Ministry that sponsored this picnic is here.

My Madhouse with a Mammogram

8/30/2019

It’s smashing time, the annual ritual in which my twin orbs are pressed into pancakes and x-rayed, to be studied by a stranger.
     And I’m a “call back,” one whose pictures weren’t “quite right,” so I’ve held my breath through another torturous compression. Now, I’m trapped in a waiting room. My choices here? To flip through a twenty-six-year-old magazine about houseplants (I’m not joking), or read an article about how supermodel Gisele Bündchen battled anxiety.
     Why would I be anxious?
     A cheery tech appears and announces the second shoot was “questionable.” I’m sent down the hall for an ultrasound where I’m introduced to a whirring machine named Unetixs. I wonder if this rhymes with “lunatics.”
     Then I’m camped in another Hades waiting room. A Martha Stewart magazine from sixteen years ago tells me “100+ Ways to Get Festive” for Christmas - and it’s August.
     Am I going crazy?
     One wall of this room is painted green like overcooked peas, which matches my flap-open gown that I clutch to keep from exposing myself.
     Two hours have crawled by. I guess that’s why I’m called a “patient.”
     The doctor appears. He announces that my anomaly is my “new, best friend,” a water cyst. Nothing to worry about.
     I breathe again, dress, and walk out the automatic double doors, shaking my head. I know mammograms can save lives, but something about this process strikes me as inherently degrading, dehumanizing.
     So when I have the opportunity, how can I create an environment that showers sensitive dignity on others in their most vulnerable times?

Reaching for the Touch of God

8/23/2019

I was so overwhelmed when I saw this painting that I wanted to reach toward the touch of God as He reaches out to infuse life into Adam. At this traveling exhibit of works by Michelangelo, I learned a strange twist about this artist who is considered the greatest painter/sculptor of all time - he rarely signed his creations. Yet whether they are signed or not, they are of inestimable worth because they have the touch of the master on them.
     Just as we have the touch of a master on us.
     Author Harold Myra dares us to imagine we were created by Michelangelo. “If we were statues sculpted by Michelangelo, with his mark on us, our value would be priceless. Yet one far greater than Michelangelo has made us.”
     We’re crafted by the finger of the Divine.
     Even with such value, we sometimes feel restless, Myra says. Why is that? It’s God’s signature on us as we yearn for the depths of his love, he says. “To authenticate the signature, to turn our longing into completion, we are invited to open ourselves to God so that he can fulfill his purpose in our lives.”
     How incredible. I’m not a random happenstance. I’m designer fashioned to live the adventure of a purposeful life.
  That’s worth reaching out toward my creator.

Croutons...
Chew on these seasoned bits of life for a little hope and humor along your highway.

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