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Leaving a Legacy of Faith

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1https://www.flickr.com/photos/pictoquotes/I don’t usually blog about my faith. I don’t think I wear it on my sleeve and there are moments when I don’t feel I am a good example of my faith so I don’t broadcast it. But today I am going to write about faith, not mine, but the examples I have had in my life.

Recently I lost four people, one as recent as last night, who have been a shining examples in my life. They didn’t shout it to the rooftops but they quietly influenced others in the way we should live our lives.

I wrote my column earlier this week on three of them, but last night God needed another angel in heaven.  His name was Gerald.

I first met Gerald when I was Sunday School superintendent many years ago. He taught for almost as many years as I had been alive. That might be an exaggeration but not by much. He cared about the kids, took them on many trips to the Boundary Waters to experience God’s creation and interacted with everyone young and old in our congregation. His sense of humor made us all smile. He was a fixture, always there, not preaching but leading and being a friend to all.  I never heard him say an unkind word to anyone and I always remember him having a smile on his face. He inspired all of us in his quiet way to treat people kindly.

When I heard of my friend’s death last night I thought about these four people who influenced my life and I wondered; will our younger generation have examples of faith as I have had? In this world it seems we may have lost our way and the examples we have make up  the reality of our times. We seek examples in other places besides the quiet people we know that live their lives walking beside us as an example of how we should treat other people. Will our younger people look back at the age I am and see the quiet influence of those in our life who have walked the walk and talked the talk of faith?

I share my column to honor my other three friends too.

Here’s my column. from the Albert Lea Tribune the week of October 26.

There are people in our lives who influence us in a silent way when we are with them. They make us laugh. They make us think. They help us experience life in a different way through the way they live their lives. It is so silent we don’t realize the impact they have on us, but when we walk away from spending time with them or talking with them on the phone or messaging with them on Facebook we are better people for interacting with them.

This week my heart is sad, but yet it is filled with hope. In the past few weeks there have been three people in my life who have left this earth and left their legacy behind. One I have known since I was teenager; his name was Dave. Another I met in the past 20 years because her parents were good friends of ours, and she became a good friend, too. Her name was Shannon. The third was an author friend, a Facebook friend, and touched my life from afar even though I never met her but spent time messaging and chatting with her on Facebook. Her name was Joyce.

Dave touched my life when I was teenager. I remember at that time thinking that he and his wife had the love story we always hope for when we get married. It didn’t mean there would not be tough times but love would conquer all. I was reminded as I sat listening to his family at the funeral that Dave always had a smile for everyone, always made the person he was talking to feel special and always let his family and friends know what they meant to him in his life. He touched my life in ways I did not realize until he was gone. His faith inspires me even after he has left this earth. I will remember it always.

Shannon battled ovarian cancer for 12 1/2 years. All the while she was going through her journey with this disease she took care of her family, she ran her business and she did it with a smile, a sense of humor, hope in her heart and she saw beauty in every day and she shared that beauty with all of us. She was courageous and beautiful inside and out. She believed in the goodness of God’s love, and she shared that faith with her family and friends on a daily basis. She loved us, and she was deeply loved and she will continue to inspire us the rest of the days of our life.

Joyce LaVene and her husband, Jim, are the authors of over 60 books in the mystery genre. The books are whimsical, fun and mysterious. Joyce died suddenly, and the writing world mourns her death. I can’t tell you exactly when Joyce entered my life. The first time I became aware that she was in my life she had shared some of my posts and my tweets. Soon we messaged, and I found out she had lived in Minnesota at one time. We had something in common. She became a regular part of my online life and I looked forward each day to sharing tweets and was always surprised when she promoted my books because in my eyes she is famous. Joyce was generous and kind with all her author friends and her readers. She took time to know us, to help us, and she made us feel we were special part of her life. I will miss her sparkling personality and our connection.

As I contemplate the sadness I feel at losing these people I also feel blessed for their presence in my life. We take those in our life for granted. Each one of these people touched my life, inspire me to be a better person and left me a legacy of hope that I inspire others the same way these three people inspired me. They shaped part of my life silently by their example.

I realize I have written lately about death, but in death there is life. The way we live our lives influences those around us without us knowing it.

These people weren’t saints. These people had their flaws as we all do, but they were genuinely beautiful people inside and out. It doesn’t mean they didn’t get mad, didn’t hurt and didn’t vent their frustrations because they were human. What they left for us was how to handle those moments with grace, dignity and love. They knew how to make others feel special. They knew the importance of giving of themselves to help others. They didn’t set out trying to be an example, and I don’t think they thought of themselves as examples, but unknowingly they touched my life.

A recent conversation with a woman who was a child when I was a teenager reminded me actions are remembered. One day she wanted to tag along with me and my teenage friends. We weren’t so kind that day and I feel ashamed thinking of it. I remembered it and so did she 50 years later. I apologized. It took me 50 years to do it. The way I treated someone 50 years ago still lived in the memory of the person I was unkind to 50 years later.

I think of what I say to people on a daily basis. I think of how I interact with those I love. I am not always kind. I am not always patient. Would I be ashamed of what my last words would be to the person I am speaking to if something happened to me or to them? Another conversation I had a year or so ago with a friend reminds me of that.  The last words remembered by this friend coming from the person who now was deceased, were angry cutting words directed towards my friend.

I feel blessed to have known these three people who inspired me to try to live my life better in the future. May you rest in peace, Dave, Shannon and Joyce. Thank you for the memories.

How Did The World Get So Topsy-Turvy?

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Something About Nothing by Julie Seedorf
 Published in the Albert Lea Tribune on October 12, 2015

bad dayWe don’t live in an optimistic world; at least we don’t if we listen to ever-present media. There are days I want to say “Stop the world, I want to get off.” I do want to go on living in this world, but I can’t believe some of the things I hear or see. It makes me sad, and I want to stop and isolate myself from everything. The news drags me down, and it sucks the breath out of the optimism of life. When I let those feelings influence me, I quit seeing the beautiful world God created for all of us.

As humans, we spend our time arguing about happenings that make people so desperate they have to pull out their guns and massacre innocent people. We ask ourselves why our kids are so stressed and anxious, many having to be put on medication. We ask ourselves how sick we have to be before we can go to the doctor because we can’t afford it. We are scared to speak because it might offend someone or we might say something that is not politically correct, and we will be bombarded in the media for innocently not knowing what we said was not acceptable. Homeowners have to be careful what they build or put in their yards so as to not get citations or get ticketed.

We lock our doors and put in alarm systems to be safe. We lock down our schools. We subject ourselves to searches at airports because of terrorism. Movie theaters are now putting in safety precautions and we are talking about building walls to keep people out to keep us safe. We believe we need to own guns that are semi-automatic weapons; the simple shotgun or rifle or pistol are not enough because they don’t shoot out rounds of ammunition at one time, because it is our right to bear arms and we need to protect ourselves.

We accept all of this — in the name of safety. I think we accept all of this in the name of fear. Fear in our nation is spiraling out of control and putting restrictions on our way of life as we once knew it.

Yet, foul language on television and on the Internet and in the news is rampant. The violence on the shows on television glorifies automatic weapons and murder and violence. Reality shows where everything goes are popular viewing along with disrespect for every avenue of society. The more violence the better the show, or the more we peer into the personal lives of people, the more popular the show. We hang on all the celebrity news waiting to see who trashes who.  And now a new online site is opening up so viewers can critique people. You can give them one to five stars as you do books and give them a review.  We as a general public have filters, and the media does not.

We have turned things around from the ’50s and ’60s. In those days, television and news were censored. Today television and news and the Internet are not censored, but we, the common American person, are. Everything seems acceptable in the news, television and Internet media, but in real life people are censored as to how we can live, what we can say and can be tracked wherever we go.

A news article, yes I did read the news that day, noted a Twin Cities suburb where people were fined and hauled off to jail because they left a ladder by their house or their garbage container was sitting in front of their garage. I shudder to think what would have happened if they had painted their house an unacceptable color. In another city, a father had to take down a treehouse they had built for their son because it wasn’t accepted by the city’s building code. It was a common tree house, the kind we built all the time when we were growing up.

An apple farm didn’t think when they put up a sign that somewhat mimicked the Black Lives matter movement. I must admit I didn’t think anything of it when I saw the sign. I didn’t connect the two, but they were raked over the coals on the media.

In the workplace we have to be careful so we don’t call women girls. I am old and happen to like being called a girl once in a while. I thought nothing of it when someone would joke with me and call me a girl or blondie when they walked into the office where I worked.

I wonder if today we don’t take ourselves too seriously. There is a common sense line with all of these subjects but I wonder if we haven’t crossed the line in the other direction so much so that it impedes upon our freedom.

An article in my local newspaper, the Wells Mirror, highlighted a family of three generations of law enforcement, the Linde family. The first generation of this family was police chief when I was a teenager. I cannot tell you how much respect I had for this man and now have for the rest of his family. They work to keep us safe.

I also have a friend from a four-generation law enforcement family. Three years ago the fourth member, a Montana state trooper, was gunned down on a Montana highway while stopping to help what he thought was a stranded motorist. The man was lying in wait for a law enforcement official to kill. These are only two families of many that work hard to protect our freedoms. I was raised to respect that uniform and to thank them for their service, especially with the ever increasing danger they face today.

We again have turned things around in this day and age and many are trying to make our law enforcement agencies the enemy.

This old brain doesn’t understand. This old brain mourns for what our children do not know they have lost because they have never known the freedoms we knew. How did the world get so topsy-turvy?

The world I grew up in wasn’t perfect. Maybe it only seemed as if we had more freedom. Maybe the adults of the ’50s and ’60s felt the same way then when they were at the age I am now. I don’t have answers.  I only have questions.

 

“Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear and superstition.” —Bernard Beckett

This Old House

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Published in the Albert Lea Tribune week of October 5, 2015.


finished roomOlder houses have character. Usually I love older houses, but the older I become the less enthralled I am with an older home. I love redecorating and all that it entails, including painting, scraping, ripping wallpaper, etc. Or at least I did until I became creaky like older homes.

Recently I stripped the 60-year-old wallpaper off the wall. The old plaster walls had seen their day. In my dream world I would have knocked the plaster down and taken the walls back to the studs and put some sheetrock in. However, the job would have been more than I could afford, and I didn’t think my husband and I were up to the task as we might have been when we were younger. I decided since I like character in houses I would put Venetian Plaster on the walls and repaint the hard wood floors for the time being. The old floor was in terrible shape and needed to be replaced with new hardwood. Again cost was an issue. I went the shabby sheik route with paint and varnish. It looks good and makes me feel as if I am in a cottage which was the atmosphere I was going for.

I watch “House Hunters” on HGTV religiously, and the offshoot shows such as the “Beach House Hunters” and the “House Hunters International.” The premise, in case you haven’t watched, is a house hunter views three properties and decides on one that fits his or her lifestyle. I also like the flip shows where a couple finds a house and someone remodels the house to their specifications.

I have “Really?” moments when watching the couples walk through houses, especially young couples. Comments such as the granite countertops would have to change because the couple doesn’t like the color, or the bathroom needs to be updated when it is a perfectly beautiful and fine bathroom. Everyone must have a master suite, and there must be at least three bathrooms and a bedroom for each child that lives in the house, plus room for guests. Kitchen cupboards make the list, too, as always needing to be updated.

I roll my eyes during many of the shows because what is criticized  or replaced looks very nice, and many of us would be very happy to have what is already there in the houses. The shows, although I love them, show us how spoiled we are as Americans because of what we expect to have as housing and furnishings. It is easy to get caught up in the expectations of society and began to want and demand perfection in our lives.

If one of these TV gurus on HGTV looked at my house, they probably would tear the entire building down. My house is not perfect. My plaster walls tell a tale of use and love and former occupants. The paint is peeling on the trim and there are a few dings in the siding. The wear isn’t there because we don’t care about keeping up our home, it is there because it is well-lived in, and although we have maintained the home over the 20 some years we have owned it, an old house always is asking for love for its owies.

Communities are stricter in what they allow and don’t allow. I once heard someone in authority in my community make a comment about a house in a different neighborhood. According to them the house was an eyesore and I must admit it was, because of lack of paint and lack of maintenance. This person thought it needed to come down even though someone was living in it. I happened to know the person living in the home couldn’t afford the repairs or the paint. They couldn’t do it themselves because of medical reasons. And yet someone thought their house needed to come down because it looked bad in the community. It wasn’t beyond salvaging and it was someone’s home, who would lose a home and have a hard time finding another one.

I used to make the same judgement until I got older and circumstances changed and my house needed some tender loving care. We do what we can with what we have. Last year was new windows, this year was new garage doors and next year will be new siding for the garage. Little by little my crooked little old house will have an owie fixed, but then, as time marches on, the owies will continue and we will continue to do what we can to find a fix within our means. Our bodies are aging and some things we can’t do ourselves anymore.

It is always an option if you can’t do the work for a home to sell it. The reality is that if your home needs work it will lower the price and it has to pass inspections. The reality is for many people in those houses you see that need painting and fixing and a lawn that needs grooming, is that it would be too expensive for them to live anywhere else. It is a catch 22.

When you see a home needing repair help consider maybe the homeowner needs help too. We don’t walk in their shoes, we don’t live behind their doors and we don’t know the pride they have so they don’t admit their dilemma and ask for help.

 

“Compassion is the basis of morality.” — Arthur Schopenhauer