Tag Archives: column

Ringing in the Old

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As I read the news this morning I decided to do something different on my blog the next few weeks that doesn’t speak of the virus. As some of you might remember, I wrote a column for the Albert Lea Tribune titled Something About Nothing. I wrote for them starting in 2005 and quit in 2019. I decided to dust off some of my favorite columns and post them on this blog the next few weeks. I am going to take these columns and put them in a new book to be read, either all at once, or a little at a time. My goal is to lift someone up especially at this time. I find writing helps me and I hope my words help you.

This column is from way back and I can’t you what year probably 2009 or 10. Enjoy.

IT’S A MIRACLE

The beautiful tall tree in my front yard that shades my house and keeps us cool is withering. I called the tree doctor. He diagnosed stress from this spring’s weather. He told me my tree would come back but possibly not until next year. In the meantime, I see its withered leaves and know there is nothing I can do to bring it back to health. It has to heal on its own with the weather and the water from the earth.

It strikes me that the tree is like our lives. When the storms of life descend on us, we seem to wither and droop. We feel helpless because there is nothing we can do for some of the stresses in our lives, such as friends’ illnesses, financial problems, and other things over which we have no control. We can only wait and heal until spring comes again.

I have said that it will be a miracle if my tree makes it. We use the word miracle lightly in our lives. We throw the word around as if we do not believe miracles can happen.

Dictionary.com describes a miracle as “An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause….”

Perhaps we are skeptical of miracles because we Christians believe miracles have to be huge. The Vatican and Lourdes carry out scientific investigations of miracles of healing. They have to meet strict criteria to be called a miracle. We also may think of miracles as those in the Bible, such as Jesus turning water into wine or Jesus rising from the dead..

C.S. Lewis stated that one cannot believe a miracle occurred if one has already drawn a conclusion in their mind that miracles are not possible.

I am currently reading Expect a Miracle by Dan Wakefield. This book is about miracles in everyday lives. I expected the book to tell of great miracles that happened in everyday lives such as miraculous unexplainable healing, instead the book opened my eyes to the miraculous things that happen every day.

Do we miss small miracles every day because we are looking for something grand and bigger? Do we throw the word around because we feel a real miracle can only happen if it is huge, like water being turned into wine? Or are miracles happening in small ways inn our life and we miss them because we truly do not believe in miracles? Or we believe a miracle cannot happen for us.

My friend recently had surgery for cancer. It went well. She has been through many surgeries through the years for this cancer. She has a cancer that most people do not survive. I consider her life to be a miracle. I am sure she does, too.

When I see a rainbow in the sky, I know there are scientific reasons for rainbows, but that rainbow always seems to appear when I need it most to give me hope. When my mother died in the midst of a cold February winter, a mourning dove visited my window. The mourning doves hadn’t been around since fall. Usually they come in pairs. That winter, one morning right after her death, one mourning dove visited my window. To me that was a miracle, and seeing that dove made me feel that things would be all right.

My tree is withering, but if just one leaf comes back, it could be a miracle that there is still life in my tree. Pat Gralton makes this statement as she listed one hundred miracles that she sees in her life. This is one of them.

My garden is a miracle. It teaches me everything about life that I will ever need to know: anticipation, birth, joy, changes in color and texture, different shades of the same color, buds, dead blossoms, killing frost, burial, saying farewell, hope for the spring, renewal. (Dan Wakefield, Expect a Miracle, http://www.danwakefield.com/id7.html)

NOTE: My tree lived and is thriving today.

All Good Things Must Come To An End

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My column from the Albert Lea Tribune and the Courier Sentinel the week of December 27.

image-1Sprinkled Notes by Julie Seedorf

All good things must come to an end. Yes, 2018 is ending, a new year is beginning, and with it are those resolutions that we make and break, new experiences and letting go of the old year.

I do not make resolutions anymore. I know I always break them, but I have made some decisions in moving forward in 2019. This is my last Sprinkled Notes/Something About Nothing column. I am retiring my column.

When Tim Engstrom chose me, an unknown, to write a weekly column somewhere around 2005 I was honored, surprised and scared. I never gave a thought to how long it would last, as I didn’t expect it would endure for many years. Yet, here it is 2018, and Sarah Stultz, now the editor of the Albert Lea Tribune, continued to have faith in me to reach people with my writing.

Over the years I have written about silly things and serious events and have given what was probably my unwanted opinion on many topics. I don’t think I ever missed a week in all those years. At times it was a joy and easy to put the words on paper. At other times, when I was sick, going through the loss of loved ones or just plain having a bad day, it was a struggle to pen my thoughts, yet I found during those times it was when I seemed to reach my readers the most.

I shared my problems with depression, and many of you could relate and accepted and shared and helped me through it. Many readers have become friends and expanded my world beyond boundaries that I ever imagined. I was amazed by the global reach of the column. I am grateful for all of this.

I choose now to let go of this column. It is time to go on to new adventures and let someone else take the reins of getting to know you, fabulous readers. I feel so blessed to have had this experience.

I am not giving up writing. I am in the midst of finishing my sixth book in the Fuchsia, Minnesota Series, and I have other projects in the works too. I will continue my blogs at sprinklednotes.com and julieseedorf.com if you want to find me. There is also my Facebook author page at facebook.com/julie.seedorf.author. What I am giving up is the weekly deadlines.

I wish you a new year blessed with love, kindness, good health and new adventures. Thank you for your support over all the years. Keep in touch and keep reading. Reading takes you away, expands your horizons and can be your peace in a chaotic world

“So comes the snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending.” — J. R. Tolkien

This is Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s final column.

Sitting in the Season

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Sprinkled Notes published in the Albert Lea Tribune and the Courier Sentinel the week of November 28, 2018

Sitting in the Season
© Julie Seedorf 2018

IMG_1017As I write this, it is the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I realize I haven’t been out of the house since the Wednesday before Thanksgiving except to take my granddog outside on his leash. How does that happen that the days pass by and I veg in my home?

We had food, plenty of leftovers and it was cold outside, which made the perfect “I don’t want to go anywhere” scenario. I am not a cold weather person.

So what do you do when you stay in? Some people get bored, but I find there are many activities or non-activities to keep me busy.

I cooked and I cooked some more. First, the Thanksgiving meal and then full meals for my husband and I. Winter makes me feel like trying the “Becky Home-eckie” thing, as my husband calls it.

I found some good books to read, and, of course, I did a little writing. I also took a few naps, but I found one of my main activities while crocheting was watching Christmas movies. I really wanted to settle in with the Hallmark Christmas movies; however, we are now streaming and none of the venues I subscribe to have the Hallmark channel. For a short time, I considered adding another service so I could watch the Hallmark movies, but the entire purpose of streaming was to save money so I stopped my twitch of hooking up another channel and settled on the Christmas movies through Hulu.

After three or four movies, I had to switch to a game show. Although I loved the movies, it was almost too much happiness. They all seemed to have the same themes, which I already knew. There was laughter, love and looking for a simpler, more peaceful life and love theme. People reunited with loved ones they had been estranged from, kids and people found homes and the movies made me want to believe in humanity once again. There was no gun violence or swearing. There were no explosions or SWAT teams. There was no one insulting each other in the fun as we see all the time on TV shows. It was more like the old “The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet” and “Father Knows Best” shows — the same shows we decry did not show us real life.

Yet, here we are in the year 2018, binging out on Lifetime Christmas shows and Hallmark Christmas shows. I assume, and you know what they say about assuming, that more women than men watch these shows. What does that say about women in America? It may say that women really do want a kinder, more caring world where they are treated with respect by the men or women they love. In many of these shows, the women are independent women, striving for a career that makes them happy with a spouse or partner who supports that independence or even being a single in the world. High-powered careers may be valued, but being content and making the point that whatever you do — from candy maker to executive — is fine if your priorities are in order, which is family, friendship, kindness and caring.

Christmas music is played earlier every year. Houses are decked out in Christmas baubles before Thanksgiving. And stores start even earlier to hook us into that good feeling we must be looking for. It says something about us as people. We are looking for a “feel good” pick-me-up, and for many, Christmas does that because it has that legacy. I haven’t even begun to mention the reason Christians celebrate Christmas: the birth of the Christ Child.

In polling my readers, there are some who do not celebrate Christmas or can’t stand these holiday movies because they don’t depict real life. Yet, for many of us, that is the very reason we watch them. It’s kind of like the Calgon ditty, “Calgon take me away.” So Hallmark movies, “take me away.”

It is hard to find that simple peace within ourselves. It is hard to slow down and take the time to internalize what we are really looking for. I have a hard time being lazy when I am home. There is always something to do and reading a book, watching Hallmark movies during the day and simply taking a nap or sitting in silence is hard for me to do without feeling very guilty about slacking off. I don’t know about men, but I think women have a problem with simply being in the moment.

I actually had to force myself to sit in a chair or lie on my bed and read for an extended period of time. It was because I knew there were things that needed to be done, even though they weren’t urgent and could wait another day. It was hard to not pick up my cell phone and check the news or send a message and keep on reading. It was a book that I didn’t want to put down, but the niggling guilt that I should be doing something productive was simmering underneath as the words imprinted themselves on my brain.

I did succumb to doing something while I was watching the movies, but it was crocheting, which also soothes my soul. I forced myself to not check my cell phone every few minutes.

I don’t have many Christmas decorations up yet. That itch was there, along with thinking I needed to figure out Christmas cards, plan a Red Hat meeting and of course shop all the red-hot deals that were being sent to my phone. What was I missing?

What are we really looking for with the holiday season? Is it something we are missing in our lives the rest of the year? If it is, what do we need to do to simply be in the season we need in our lives all year long?