Category: Inspiration - trish hermanson

Pat Showed Me How to Live and How to Die

10/28/2019

My friend Pat showed me how to live and how to die. I met her in a women’s study group, where Pat impressed me that she was committed to BE INVOLVED all her life. She dressed smartly, completed her assignments, and was always the first to answer questions.
     Then the cancers she’d fought for fifteen years caught up with her. When doctors told her she had three months to live, Pat kept her PRIORITIES. A friend asked her how her life would change. “Why should it? I’m still listening to God and loving people.”
     She kept her PERSPECTIVE. A pharmacist asked Pat how she was doing, and she answered, “Great. I have three months.” The pharmacist gasped and said, “I’m sorry.” Pat replied, “Don’t be. I’m going home.”
     Pat kept her HUMOR. She called the OxyContin she took “oxymoron,” and on an ambulance run, she asked the two good looking paramedics, “Do you have to be handsome to get your job?”
     When Pat was released to be home, we moved our study group to her living room where she mentioned she wanted the song “I’ll Fly Away” sung at her memorial service. After our study finished, we wheeled her to her bedroom and tucked her in.
      The next day Pat suffered a stroke. No more smile dancing on her face. No more quick quips. Paralyzed on one side. But Pat remembered her DESTINY. At her bedside I read the scripture that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Her eyes fluttered open, and she lifted her right arm heavenward and flapped it, ready to fly away home. Four days later she flew away.
     There’s an art to living and dying. Pat taught me both.
***
The song "I'll Fly Away" is here.

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.

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.

Barbara's Trip from Woodstock to Woodstock

8/16/2019

She was one of those folks Joni Mitchell sang about - a child of God walking along a road that led to Woodstock. Seeds of goodwill from attending that music festival took root in Barbara Moore’s soul but lay dormant for years, squelched by life in the fast lane. Then Barbara asked what she really wanted. “To get back to the garden.”
     She was shocked when she learned about the effects of hunger on children in America. They often perform poorly in school because they can’t concentrate. One boy told his principal he was hungry and “just couldn’t think.” Some receive free or reduced-cost school lunches, but on weekends, they may go hungry.
     Barbara went into action, and Jeffco Eats was born. Volunteers bag food that they transport to schools for students to carry home for the weekend. One boy reported that the can of beef stew he received made his headache vanish.
     It doesn’t always take an organization to meet needs. One woman I know watches out for kids on her block. A grandfather runs errands for his daughter so she doesn’t have to haul her preschoolers around.
     At times I’m overwhelmed by the world’s problems. But I heard someone say, “Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is to stop praying only and to start doing.”
     Good advice. So I help transport food bags to fill hungry tummies. We’re transforming the idealism of Woodstock into the reality of foodstock.
Because no kid should suffer from a headache because he hasn’t eaten.
     ***
     This post from 2018 is updated here for the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock.

Donna's Surprising Takeaway from a 2,200-Mile Trek

8/8/2019

Donna Nedde trekked five million steps and 2,200 miles and came away with a message that surprised me.
     She and her husband Tom Kinsella took five months conquering the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a journey through fourteen states. This is like scaling Mt. Everest sixteen times.
   Donna, whom I met at the rec center, burned through three pairs of hiking boots and lost fifteen pounds, typical for hikers who consume five thousand calories daily just to maintain their weight on this expedition. When they arrived in a town every week or so, “I could personally eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia,” Donna says.
     And what is her amazing take away?
     “How little we need to live.”
     They carried backpacks, a tent, stove, freeze-dried food, breakfast bars, granola, a water purifier, shorts and a shirt, long pants, phones they rarely turned on, a camera, a shovel and toilet paper, Tom’s Native American flute, “and my Kindle for reading at night,” Donna says.
     That’s it.
     What a contrast from what I observe around me - houses built smaller while storage lockers spring up. Catherine Alles from the Foundation for Economic Education reports that the average American home has 300,000 items. One out of four houses with two-car garages can’t fit a car in them because of all the stuff, she says.
     So Donna’s surprising message is not how to survive, but how to truly live: simply.
     Maybe that’s what we need to survive, too.
     And maybe it’s time to clean out my closets.