hope

Tough Words From A Tough Teacher

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The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Not a day goes by where life doesn’t teach me a lesson. Most days I’m too busy to listen to what life is trying to teach me. There are times when I have no choice but to listen. Nine months ago life knocked me down. I lay flat on my back. Life towered over me and said, “You’re going to listen to me. You’ve no choice. Whether you take to heart the lesson I’m going to give you is up to you. But you will listen to what I have to say.” Tough words from a tough teacher.

It’s strange how life’s challenges always come down to a choice. I have the freedom to choose. I can choose to hear life’s lesson, learn from it, and grow. Or, I can hear it, refuse to embrace it, and shrivel. It’s always my choice. The ultimate freedom.

Losing someone I deeply loved knocked me flat on my back. I chose not to stay down, but to get up and learn the lessons life is trying to teach this reluctant learner.  The words of Saint Francis of Assisi sum up many of life’s lessons for me. It’s my job to live them more fully day by day. Life will continue to teach me each day until my days are over and by that time I hope to have learned and applied all I need to go on to the next part of my journey.

I Can’t Stop From Singing

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I have an outdoor herb garden. A real herb gardener will laugh at me. I have enough rosemary and basil to share with all the neighbors. They’re joined by three tomato plants, a blackberry bush, and a fig tree. No rhyme nor reason as to what I choose to plant. I added mint to the group this year. Why did I add mint? It smells nice. That’s the best reason I can give you. I have one large leafy green plant in the house, started by Babe years ago. She’s shared cuttings with daughters and neighbors. She loved the plant. Each time I water it, I know she’s nodding her loving approval from Heaven.

The leafy plant sits alone, no other plants with whom to commune. Everyone needs a friend. I thought another easy to care for green plant might make a good friend for the leafy plant company and brighten up the house as well. Today, I bought a mint plant. I repotted it and now it sits in the living room flirting with the leafy plant.

Plants and springtime are signs of life to me. It’s my favorite of the five seasons. Whoa, five seasons?  In Texas, football is a righteous season of its own. Spring offers new life in flowers, birds singing, warmer temperatures. I’m like the mint plant I repotted today. I’ve had a tough stretch, it’s time for me to be repotted. Like the mint plant I repotted, my roots are balled into the soil, in my case memories.

My springtime awaits, as does yours. It’s time to open the windows to let hope flow in freely, unfettered to smother me. I can’t stop from smiling. I can’t stop from singing.

 

I Like Who I Am

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Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.
– Robert H. Schuller

I am who am. I can be nothing more than what I am. It doesn’t matter so much if others like who I am as much as it matters that I like who I am. I do. I very much like who I am. I wasn’t alway this way. I tried to polish my image. I sandpapered the rough edges. None seemed to help. Then, one day, a moment of grace. I understood, at a deep level, I am the cumulative sum of all my experiences, the good and the bad. The joys and the sorrows. The successes and the failures. It’s all me. I knew in that moment if I were to ever love myself and like who I am, I had to embrace it all. All of it, the stuff I wanted and the stuff I wish never happened that made me into what I am today. I am grateful for all that was, and is and is to come. I like me, who I am, and what I am becoming.

Putting The Clouds Behind Me

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On this long storm the Rainbow rose —
On this late Morn — the Sun —
The clouds — like listless Elephants —
Horizons — straggled down —

The Birds rose smiling, in their nests —
The gales — indeed — were done —
Alas, how heedless were the eyes —
On whom the summer shone!

The quiet nonchalance of death —
No Daybreak — can bestir —
The slow — Archangel’s syllables
Must awaken her! ~ On this long storm the Rainbow rose by Emily Dickinson

No one is a stranger to pain. It is one of the commonalities binding us together as human beings. When I watch the news and see a father grieving over the loss of his children or wife thousands of miles away, my heart grieves with him and prayers from my heart and lips rise to a loving God to bring healing to him. No one is a stranger to pain.
Pain doesn’t have the last word. Suffering doesn’t have the last word. At least not with me. I live in hope-filled expectation, that today will better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better than today. I place my heart into the hands of a loving God and walk forward, my eyes ever ahead catching sight of a rainbow that is mine.
There is a rainbow waiting for you and your pain will turn into laughter and joy. As the poet Emily Dickinson says, “On this long storm, the rainbow rose.”
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Learning Common Sense the Hard Way

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Lessons From Life

There are things that we don’t want to happen but have to accept, things we don’t want to know but have to learn, and people we can’t live without but have to let go.  ~Author Unknown

Why does it take so long to acquire wisdom? I consider myself intelligent. I earned a doctorate. I had a stellar career in higher education. Yet, I am a slow learner. My uneducated dad would tell my brother and me we had a great education, but the university forgot to teach us common sense. I always got a laugh out of that one.

In my dad’s lived experience of growing up with ten siblings, raised by a single mom after his father died, living through the great depression, and fighting in WW II allowed him to gain human wisdom. He called it common sense. He learned early on the things life is now teaching me. I learned:

  • Trusting God is better than asking why.
  • Living in the present moment is better than living in the past.
  • Having a hope-filled heart is better than having a bitter heart.
  • Knowing love wins, love always wins is better than not knowing or ever having experienced love.

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