Category: Spirituality - trish hermanson

Brenda Received Her Calling before Birth

7/6/2020

Brenda received her life’s calling before she was born, but didn’t realize it for years.
     She was still in the womb when her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her father and seven siblings took a vote and decided her mother should end the pregnancy so the cancer could be treated. Brenda’s mother objected. “It’s my child and I won’t do that.”
     She died five months after Brenda was born.
     Brenda told me, “My daddy never said my mother’s name. Never showed me pictures of her.”
     But Brenda loved playing nurse as a child and dreamed of becoming one. The dream nearly evaporated when she took on the rigors of nursing school while raising three children. One day she sat in her car crying and wished she could talk with her mother. “I heard an audible voice: ‘She gave her life for you, and she didn’t have to.’” That spurred Brenda on, and she finished school.
     I’m grateful she did, because today Brenda is an oncology nurse treating my daughter Ashley. As she told me her story, she had an epiphany: Her mother had cancer and gave her life for her; now Brenda gives her professional life to those with cancer. “I never thought about that before,” she said. “But I think It’s a calling.”
     Brenda’s story took my breath away. I’ve never audibly heard God, but sometimes I get a thought to call someone, or an idea to act upon. When I do, things happen that - dare I say? - carry the fingerprints of the supernatural.
     I think sometimes God nudges me.
  How about you?

Where's Your Refuge?

6/15/2020

A six-foot-long alligator growled and flashed his teeth at Duane and me from a pond on an Island off the coast of Alabama recently. If he’d attacked, I’d have scrambled up a tree, which is what this magnificent oak tree is known for. Locals call it the Goat Tree, because in the island’s past, wild goats scrambled into it to take shelter from roaming alligators.
     Don’t we all face “alligators” at one time or another? Health issues that sneak up on us. Bosses that growl at us. Money problems that threaten to bite us. None of us are immune from problems. So where do we run to?
     I may be going out on a limb with what I’m about to say, but trust me, it’s as sturdy as an oak. We know this world isn’t what it ought to be (racism, pandemics, the IRS). And we know we’re made for much more than we experience. I’ve come to believe that this deep yearning is the voice of our creator beckoning us for something more. He’s in the process of taking all the brokenness and remaking it - and us - for a better world. In the meantime (and it can get pretty mean), if you can’t picture yourself scampering up a tree for shelter, then visualize running to a rock as Whitney Houston sang here.
  Whatever alligators are nipping at your heels, I invite you to take refuge.

Paradise Has Termites!

6/8/2020

Duane and I are visiting family members on what we thought was an Alabama island paradise with swaying palms and white-sand beaches strewn with shells. But then a pesky cockroach showed up in our flatware drawer. And we dodged biting ants when hiking. And a swarm of termites slipped through a crack under our bedroom window and infested the room. Even after swatting, smashing, and vacuuming I found termite body parts inside my laptop the next day.
It’s paradise lost. Humanity out of harmony with nature. And I think about how much worse it is in parts of the world where malnutrition, filthy water, and pollution rob people of health. And where justice and mercy have washed down the gutter of corruption. On this planet, we live in the “shadowlands,” writer C.S. Lewis said, a dim reflection of what the world is meant to be.
     Do you ever relish the world’s beauty, yet ache about what is marred? About the rawness of racism, the horror of hatred? I do. But I’m hopeful. In “Ecclesiastes," one of my favorite books, an ancient teacher wrote that the Creator of this world has lodged eternity in each person’s heart. We long for the paradise that’s lost. But it’s coming again! Our yearning is well expressed in this innocent song here I invite you to listen to.
  ***
Image from Insight Pest Solutions.

I Gave My Daughter the Predisposition for Cancer - And She Got It!

5/21/2020

I gave my daughter the predisposition for cancer - and she got it.    This is not the legacy I wanted to leave.
     Ashley was diagnosed with cancer at age thirty-seven just before the birth of her second child. My husband Duane and I ran some genetic testing to see where this propensity came from, and I learned I’m the one who passed a mutant gene on to her. So I’m the mutant, but not a ninja.
     I felt wretched and apologized to Ashley for what she is experiencing - chemo sickness, hair loss, and all the uncertainty of the future. But she graciously reminded me it wasn’t my fault. This weakness was genetically passed on to me, too.
     It’s true. We inherit our chromosomes from our ancestors, getting things like our hair and eye color.
     However, sometimes we receive crummy-zomes. It’s part of the brokenness of this world, a shattering that occurred when our first ancestors turned their backs on Goodness in the Garden of Eden, saying they wanted more.
     But there’s hope. In the first century, Paul of Tarsus wrote that this whole world - from ecology to biology - yearns to be remastered. Don’t you feel that longing in your soul for things to be made right? The great news is that the Creator has inaugurated the re-creation of everything, and we can join him in that process. Jazz great Nina Simone captured this vision in “There’s a New World Coming,” and I invite you to listen to it.

How Will We Pick Up the Pieces of Our Broken Lives?

5/13/2020

When I spotted this broken phone along a hiking trail, I thought about how our lives have been trampled upon by coronavirus: lost jobs, lost businesses, lost graduations, lost wedding celebrations.
     And lost lives.
     How easy it was in the past for us to believe that we are masters of our fate, captains of our souls. How wrong we were.
     And how easy it was to be sidetracked from what’s important. Henri J.M. Nouwen, a Dutch professor who wrote on modern spirituality, said, “…we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying or doing. We simply go along with the many ‘musts’ and ‘oughts’ that have been handed on to us.”
     I hope to live more mindfully now, grateful for little things I once took for granted, like walking down the block and greeting neighbors from closer than six feet when it’s safe.
     Twenty-seven hundred years ago, a Hebrew named Micah said that God commends those who practice justice and mercy while walking humbly with God. Perhaps in the past we’ve focused on the justice and mercy part, but didn’t fully acknowledge our true source of life. Perhaps we forgot that even the simplest gifts are from God.
  As we gradually pick up the pieces of our lives, may our vision become as crystal-clear as the number of this year - 2020.