aging process

Hope Lives in Photos

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photo albumsSo many photo albums. Boxes and boxes of memories from the beginnings of a life to the present. Photos of my son – even his birth certificate – preserved in plastic sleeves with descriptive tags to indicate his growth: 8 pounds, 3.5 ounces, 19.5 inches long.

Preschool. Kindergarten graduation with a mortar board and tassel. Through the years of puberty – his larvae of manhood – into the present grown man. And a handsome fellow to boot!

Report cards, certificates of attendance and Awana awards. How quickly they grow, then leave.

Other memories: children sitting in multiple classrooms listening to my words, vacations to Europe, Florida, Chicago and my beloved New Mexico.

Photos of family members now gone, a reminder of their younger, more vital days before old age sapped strength and the ICU machines beeped a goodbye.

Some family members still living and working although crowned with greying hair, wisdom wrinkles and those chronic illnesses we try to avoid or hide.

Lives lived and recorded on yellowing film and clipped into binders. But who wants to store these heavy boxes? None of us, especially when we can scan, digitalize and save to that obsequious cloud.

After several people looked through the albums and chose pictures they wanted to keep, it was my task to make the final choices.

I took out the plastic sleeves, stored them for my son and his future home, then threw away those albums. Most of them now faded, their backs broken, cardboard flayed by multiple moves.

A life lived. The memories sealed forever in our hearts, each of us filtering hope from our own perceptions, our viewpoints selective yet valuable.

When we finally ascend to eternity’s arms, will the pictures of our lives be stored by the good we did, the love we shared, the other pilgrims we helped?

I like to think so.

No need for albums then. We’ll have living memorials of the hope we encapsulated within one short life.

©2019 RJ Thesman – All Rights Reserved

Hope Shines and Sometimes They Forget memorialize lives within the genre of essays. Check them out.

 

 

Hope and the Saturday Sisters

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For over twenty years, we have met together – usually monthly – to eat lunch, talk about our families and prayer requests, to do life together.SAMSUNG

We have watched our children grow up, shared the joys of weddings and the sorrow of funerals. Phone calls, emails and texts help us stay connected, but it is our monthly meetings that feed my soul.

As I have considered my next book, I wondered if it was time to write about the Saturday Sisters. Somehow, that book isn’t coming together – yet – so I asked each of these precious ones if I could describe them in a blog post.

With their permission, I decided to go deep and talk about how each of these Sisters has added to my life.

During the aging process, we begin to think about legacies and what we will leave behind. We de-clutter the stuff, knowing it is no longer  important. But it is the people we cannot forget, cannot shove into the Goodwill bin. These are the treasured ones who have added to our living and shown us how to be.

This blog post begins my thank you to the Saturday Sisters for how they have enriched my life.

Janet: The Encourager. She has a special way of turning a dark day into a beam of light. With her witty humor and her pithy statements, she has often given me hope when everything seemed desperate.

She calls once / week to check up on me from her sunroom office where her title is inscribed near her chair: CEO – Chief Encouragement Officer.

Her voice holds warmth and often – a suppressed giggle – reminding me how joy lies just below the surface. We just have to shove away the despair to find it.

Janet encourages me in my writing and in my living. She and her husband, Steve, have supported my various ministries and they are patrons for my writing life.

She is also a prolific reader. She finds the most amazing books I have never heard of. Then she shares them with the group and often sends each of us a copy.

One of those books provides morning and evening meditations for me. “A Diary of Private Prayer” by John Baillee has challenged me while reminding me once again how Janet encourages me to grow.

It is Janet’s lovely house where we meet, because it is totally accessible for her wheelchair. This Encourager lives with MS and its side effects, facing her own dark days yet somehow never letting them destroy her faith.

I am consistently amazed by Janet’s courage, and I love her intensely for who she is.

Janet’s husband, Steve, is our associate member. He helps Janet get the house ready, picks treasures from his garden to share with us and gives amazingly strong, beautiful hugs. Steve is one of those rare men who is trustworthy, kind and smart.

He and Janet have merged their personalities into a grace-filled pairing of what marriage should be.

It is Janet who organizes our monthly meetings, who leads us in our discussions and keeps us on track. She is the energizing force behind the Saturday Sisters, and I truly don’t know how she does it so well.

Except that she is gifted as an Encourager.

She knows who she is and how to set healthy boundaries. As a former lawyer, a devoted wife, mother and grandmother – Janet is the Sister who keeps me steadfastly searching for Hope.

©2018 RJ Thesman – All Rights Reserved

For more information about my books, check out my Amazon Author Page.

Hope Finds a Word

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Many of my friends are choosing their words for the year. Although I don’t usually follow suit, one word has surfaced. This word and its meaning once stymied me because I could not find a practical way to utilize it.

But as I have searched for a workable definition, the practice and discipline of using this word has moved front and center.ballet-dancers

I believe this word is important to me – especially in 2017 – because of what happened in 2016. As a Christian, I was appalled at the vitriol I read on social media and how followers of Christ used their freedom of speech as a weapon.

Certainly, we should stand up for what we believe, but to attack other human beings – creations of God – just because they believe differently? Sheesh!

They will know we are Christians by our love.

So my word for the year addresses my traumatized soul and also gives me a higher bar to attain. The word is GRACE.

I know the Sunday School definition for grace: God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense. But I have searched for the practical version, a way to actually BE a Christian rather than just writing and/or posting my beliefs – hoping to stay away from the ugliness and cruelty witnessed last year.

The definition I have settled on is, “Grace is the disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy or clemency.”

To live with a focus on kindness, to show grace to the checker at Target who has been on her feet for eight hours and the guy in front of me is yelling at her because his coupon expired.

To see the tears threatening to spill over and when it is my turn, to briefly touch her hand and say, “I’m sorry about what just happened. I think you’re doing a great job.”

To park in the lot at Wal-Mart and instead of rushing inside to get my stuff, to show grace-filled courtesy to the elderly woman, lift her trunk and help her empty the cart – then offer to take her cart inside so she doesn’t have to walk all that way on a gimpy leg.

To realize none of us act as we should every single day and give grace when someone barks an insult or uses only one finger to wave at me in traffic.

To be grateful for my freedoms yet allow with grace for the differences among us as we exercise those freedoms.

And how does grace look if I turn it inward? What are the practical ways I can give myself grace in this new year?

To realize I am an achiever, yet my projects are not more important than my health. To rest even if I’m not sleepy.

To allow myself breaks to take a long walk, to sit on the deck and marvel at the colors of the blue jay at my feeder.

To realize I gain five pounds every winter as I hibernate from the cold and give myself grace because I always lose those same pounds in the spring.

To admit the truth about the aging process – it DOES happen so I need to give myself grace and not hate the changes morphing me into a visual of my ancestors. After all, each year brings me closer to heaven where age will not matter.

To realize my garden cannot look like the magazine covers, no matter how hard I work. To give myself grace and let some of the plots grow over with natural grasses and even weeds. This graceful strategy will give me more time to write, reflect and pray.

To believe that grace also leads to gracefulness – a beautiful visual of a ballerina floating across the stage. Can I float through 2017 with a new version of gracefulness, slowing down and just being myself?

In her book, “Walking on Water,” Madeleine L’Engle writes exactly what I want to embrace. “…To take time away from busyness, time to BE. To take BEING time – something we all need for our spiritual health. Slow me down, Lord. When I am constantly running, there is no time for being. When there is no time for being, there is no time for listening.”

So as I float through 2017, my goal is to show kindness, to offer courtesy and to fight for clemency – to allow for the differences among us and love in spite of them.

Hope calls me to be more grace-filled and graceful in the next twelve months. Will you join me?

©2017 RJ Thesman, Author of the Reverend G Trilogy http://amzn.to/1rXlCyh

Hope Ages

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In a few weeks, the calendar will flip over and I will celebrate another birthday. How quickly those calendar pages become obsolete.birthday-cake

In the proverbial quote, if I had known I would reach this age, I would have taken better care of myself. But then – maybe I wouldn’t.

We make choices day by day without thinking of the long-term consequences. We grow busy with life, do the best we can with the passing of time and hope everything will work out.

Occasionally we get lucky. Our arteries don’t grow plaque. Our blood runs clear. Our brains continue to remember.

Or not.

Even with the most preventive measures and the best intentions, life sometimes knocks us down. Alzheimer’s, cancer, the tragedies we never expected.

How do we stay in hope even while our bodies unravel? How can we stay focused on today when each twenty-four hour period passes so quickly?

For Christians, our focus is on living with joy and following the example of Jesus.

But Jesus did not age. We do not have a role model for the Medicare years.

We are left to figure out how much gray we will allow to color our roots. We play the game of connect the dots with the brown spots on our arms. We wonder how to remain in joy when joints ache and we can no longer run the bases like our younger selves.

We have to plan for days of fun, because they don’t spontaneously happen anymore. This is why we stare at little children and listen to them giggle. We’re trying to figure out how we once did that and why it disappeared.

Too much analysis leaves us cynical and afraid.

My bucket list is longer now than it was in my twenties, because the time clock is ticking. I want to do more of the things on my list – immediately – or sooner.

So I have decided to stick with the principles that have governed my life thus far:

  • Love others as much as possible
  • Practice the presence of God and breathe in his vitality
  • Love myself as well
  • Do at least one productive thing every day
  • Stay away from negative people
  • Don’t worry about the next twenty-four hours
  • Look forward to eternity

And I plead with the Psalmist, “Oh, God, now that I am old and gray, don’t forsake me. Give me time to tell this new generation and their children about all your mighty miracles” (Psalm 71:18 TLB).

Ultimately, even as age chases me, I know the end of each day brings me closer to the beginning of my eternity.

So I live with the lyrics of Les Miserables, one more day, one day more – one birthday passing and another on the way. One more opportunity to love and live well.

©2016 RJ Thesman, Author of the Reverend G Trilogy