Category: Spirituality - trish hermanson

How I Discovered Treasures in Darkness

3/19/2021

Following cancer surgery recently, I recalled my exploration in South Dakota’s Jewel Cave, the third largest underground chamber in the world. As I descended into the damp cavern, gloom wrapped around me - nothing but darkness and eerie silence. Then a guide shot a beam of light at a cave wall, and calcite crystals sparkled back - treasures in darkness.
     Lately I’ve experienced so much confusion with cancer. How does this impact my future? How should I treat it? Lots of contradictory advice.
     Yet occasionally gems sparkled in the darkness. Like the time a friend said I’d been on her mind, so she prayed; she didn’t know I was undergoing grueling medical tests. Another day a neighbor left a bouquet of flowers on our front step. A cheery card arrived in the mail. An encouraging email popped up. And supportive comments poured onto Face Book. I’m humbled by such kindnesses that inched me forward through the dark tunnels of cancer.
I remember God’s statement to the king of the Persian Empire more than two thousand years ago: “I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord.”
     Perhaps this is one reason I experience dark times - to discover that when all else is murky, I can be confident that God still rules.
You’ve shown me great compassion during this time. Thank you. I hope to pass it along to others when they are trapped in darkness.

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

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.

When the Gate Swings Open to Another World

1/15/2021

Every once in awhile an invisible gate swings opens before me, and I realize I’m living in two dramas - the world around me and an unseen world.
     That happened when we sold our ranch-style home. We’d completed upgrades that we loved: installing wood and tile flooring everywhere except the living room that we kept carpeted, and turning two bedrooms into one to create a master area with a separate retreat.
     We loved it, but then we sensed it was time to “right-size.” Crazy, I know, but we put it on the market.
     A young couple with two kids nabbed it. At closing, the woman turned to me. “I couldn’t maneuver my daughter’s wheelchair on the stairs anymore. One time I lost control and she tumbled down.”    She explained her young daughter had a genetic anomaly that confined her to a wheelchair. “We needed a home on one level with all hard surfaces, except one carpeted room for physical therapy. And a big master bedroom to keep her bed near us so we could reattach her breathing tube when she loses it and chokes overnight.”
     I blinked back tears. Unbeknownst to us, we’d prepared our home for them. A God prompt? I think so. This reminds me that “…we are but actors in the play, not the director, and in fact we must listen carefully to the whispered stage directions,” author Philip Yancey says.
     That’s good to recall these days when the world is spinning out of control. More is going on than I can imagine.