Tag: hope

Hope for Things Thought Dead

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What is the story here? I can see it plainly, but I never know how plain it is to others – we are all products of our past thoughts and experiences and it can make such a difference in our outlooks.

Last fall I put these amaryllis bulbs in the garage for their winter dormancy period. Their long leaves flopped over, turned yellow and dried up. They got no water, very little light, and no attention. One of them started pushing up a new leaf during the winter but there was no chance of it surviving and I worried about the untimely appearance. They were all dead looking, didn’t seem very stable or rooted in their pots, and were soft like they might be rotting. Nothing hopeful about them.

And then they came to life, like so many things do in the spring. Tips of the new leaves were barely visible in the dead layers of brown wrappings. I didn’t know if the early started would start again a second time, but it did. It was much later than the others and seems a bit tattered but it’s alive.

For me, it’s all about the hope that is built into creation that dead things come to life. It’s one of those plainly seen reminders of the intentions of our Creator. Seeing how life is embedded into the DNA of plants and trees and animals of all kinds, I can’t imagine that it isn’t also built into us. I do believe there is a creator God and that he’s telling me on a regular yearly schedule, that he is all about restoring, making new, and starting over, no matter how unlikely it might look to me. I love the sound of that and the spirit behind it.

Funny thing, once I started believing that God was sending me personal messages through things I could see and touch, things he created for my environment, he became real and personal to me. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in science. Science is a process by which we study our world. But science is not a creator. Science is still looking for a creator.

I’m enjoying this season. I’m watching for green grass to come up through the dead, matted fields. I’m watching for the geese to come to the marsh to make nests. I’m looking at the lilac twigs to see how far along the buds are. I’m watching the sunrise shift rapidly from south to north on the horizon. There is nothing dead that doesn’t have some hope attached to it and it all feels very personal, now that I’ve decided it is.

Real Conversations, Real People

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December continues with the dual (and totally compatible) goals of writing and walking, although not at the same time.

The weekend is always refreshing because I have the opportunity to interact with the world and reassure myself that there are still real people out there. Breaking news! We are not just talking heads on computer screens, figments of our imaginations and the internet. I was able to identify several people by their eyes and hair (or no hair, whatever…). Today I had three or four socially distanced, but meaningful, conversations with friends. Today, I went to “in-person” church.

Yep, hair and eyes, people.  That’s all we’ve got. Frightening.

The husband also looks forward to going. We’ve been talking this week about the value of face to face, eye to eye, contact and how good it is for the brain to be stimulated that way. Evidently, imaging studies have shown heightened brain activity with this kind of contact. I think we knew it was important for babies to have eye contact with their caretakers for bonding purposes, but this goes farther.

Supposedly, the only other animals, other than humans, that show this response is dogs. The person I heard this from was very apologetic to cat owners, but perhaps they need to do more studies. My cat looks me right in the eye and I know she’s thinking. I am also trying to think what she might be thinking, which means we both have heightened brain activity. I really like dogs too and am in awe of the uncanny knowledge they have of their owners. Dogs have the eye thing down, perfectly, I might say.

My cat wants to bond with me every time I sit down, but her whiskers tickle too much.

So we went to church and were reminded that this is a natural time of the year to be nurturing our sense of hope. Not just hope that pandemics end, but hopes that there is a real God and that he came once, and he has plans to come again and make all bad things good.

Following that I spent another afternoon packing boxes and bags, helping my friends who are selling their northern house. And then, of course, the 10,000 steps on the treadmill, while listening to two hour-long podcasts. I’m listening to writers, authors and editors talk about various aspects of writing. Even online, this kind of connecting gives me ideas (and makes the time on the torture machine go much faster). Maybe you’ve noticed on the sidebar of this blog that I’m a Hope*Writer. It’s a valuable group for all kinds of hopefilled reasons.

Last but not least in any way, my accountability pic of the day!

Things I Love About God

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I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before, but since I’ve been thinking about God a lot lately, now is a good time. We are having hard happenings in our family. Cancer has struck again and the loss hurts. But our faith is meant for times like this and we don’t grieve like those who have no hope.

Things I Love About God

1. He makes his own decisions, is not anyone’s puppet or genie.

2. Ultimately, no one spoils his plan. No one.

3. He is pure genius in so many ways – his creation of time, for instance.

4. He is love, and made me capable of loving.

5. He made me with emotions. I can know pleasure, joy and also loneliness, depression and need.

6. He gives me hope that he can fill every need I’m capable of feeling.

7. Restoring is his passion.

8. He lets us have surprises.

9. He is mysterious and has secrets.

10. He makes me think, unless I am too tired and then he just loves me.

Family on Mother’s Day

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We don’t all fit on one screen, and my family will know this isn’t our Mother’s Day screenshot, but it’s us the time before.

This has been such a strange day, happy in many ways, but with a pervasive sadness that feels almost like a home that I keep coming back to. In a way, I value the sadness too because it’s a precious emotion, indicating depth of feeling. I pretty much only get sad about things I really care about, and mostly those things are relationships.

We got word that my Aunt Irene (but we always said “Auntie Irene”) died today. She was 94. It was exactly two years ago on Mother’s Day that her husband, Uncle Bob, died and I think she has been trying to join him ever since. She was the last of my father’s siblings. One more generation of that family is now gone. They were all interesting, loved, important people to their children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews. At times I was very close to Auntie Irene and I wish now I had been more attentive to her in these last couple of years. Some things about being 94 are probably okay, but when you consider how many of your friends aren’t around any more at that age, it has to be lonely. I am sad thinking about the loneliness of old age.

One of my nieces who has miscarried and lost her unborn children was gifted, anonymously, a beautiful Mother’s Day orchid with a note attached. It reminded me of several women I know who grieve on this holiday. It reminded me that I used to feel that way, and I want to hug them and cry too. These things would not hurt if we did not love. But loving is worth hurting.

Lastly, nothing speaks depth of family relationship like a reunion, so we all braved technology and Zoomed together this afternoon. (Well, almost all of us – it’s bittersweet when some of our special adoptees can’t get on the internet highway and join us.) It’s always a wonder to me, to see the faces appear on my screen, one after another – the family matron (my mom), the elders (my generation), the next tier down (all the cousins), and the littlest kiddos who have no idea what they are part of. North to south, east to west, we are all over the country but together on the screen because something tells us it’s important. Our stories are not all perfectly happy, but we are together, trying to build depth into our relationships. I look at them all and want to tell them “Please, don’t ever let loneliness have the last word. You have a family. You belong and are loved.” But I might not have actually said that. I should have.

So I hope that this day so closely connected to family relationships was a good day for you. I hope you know that whether you are a single, or a couple, or a whole tribe, you are capable of family relationship because you were made to need something of what that offers. A good Creator would not have created us with desires that couldn’t be fulfilled. It wouldn’t make sense. Have hope and love those around you with all your strength. Make family a reality.

Choosing Hope

Shirleyjdietz4 Comments

January 26, 2019

Writing is difficult these days. Our family is going through cancer trauma and much of what I need to tell is too personal. Other things I might write about seem so trivial in comparison. That doesn’t leave much left.

It is easy to keep busy because we are forming a team, coming together to share necessary tasks and watch out for each other emotionally as well as physically. Only one of us has the serious physical suffering, but we all feel the shock as we try to help. Everyone worries about how everyone else is coping. Tears come easily and often. We cling to anything that reminds us of normal and we are often grateful for mundane tasks that occupy our minds and bodies.

We do have faith in our God who has said that it’s times like this that he carries us through. We are waiting to see how that looks. Now we are finding out what it means to have it be “well with our souls” while bad things are happening. Some days our “souls” are not doing so well and we realize that this work is not just physical, not just emotional, but very much spiritual.

Realizing that we live in a world that has gotten ruined in many different ways, we have done what we can to think about and prepare for the worst case scenario. As I went through my own worst case imaginings (which I am always doing – seems to be a habit) I found it kind of liberating to have faced the most feared things. It seemed to free up the energy and motivation to fight back.

When something comes upon me suddenly, unexpectedly, I spend more time with my fear than I do with my hope. There are those two different views to any perceived threat and I do have a choice about how much time to give to each of them. With God’s help, I’m choosing hope.

With God there is no rule about how these things must go. There is the possibility of surprise and blessing to come where I least expect it. God can take care of us in the darkest of places. Isn’t that what I’ve said – “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you (God) are with me”? Now I get to mean it for myself, and for someone else.

Another biblical phrase is “consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds”. I’m not yet at the place where I can say I’m glad our family gets to go through a trial. None of us are glad for this. It was not a chosen path, but since we are on it, much better that we accept the offer of Jesus, our creator and greatest healer, to go with us. How could we not? Once again, just sayin’…

One Last Place

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20160219_104942.jpg

 

Rather than gliding smoothly

It won’t budge even though it’s pulled

Forward, backward until fingers ache from the effortl

It doesn’t look that bad

From the outside where the teeth

Are shiny and black and only a small bit of paint –

It flakes off with the wiggling, a sign of the greater problem.

 

It was in a bad place

Where the humidity and who knows what else

Sat on it for too long a time and it began to change inside

Looking closely, there

There it is along the edges…

Dusty, irregular, misshapen line of gray

The metal of one

Grows into the metal of the other

In a weld of fusion and confusion that renders it immobile, stuck.

 

Scraping it away

Looking for true strength beneath

There are so many places where the corrosion sits

But, there has to be

One last place, that when it is freed

It moves and becomes, once again, what it was meant to be.

 

 

S. Dietz 2016