Wildflower Writes

Photo by  Lesly Juarez  on  Unsplash I love working with ideas. I enjoy working with people. Words are my favorite tools. I don’t enjoy working with my hands much. As I tried to create something for a Christmas ornament exchange last month, I kept muttering, “I hate crafts.” So it is something of an accomplishment this afternoon when I put together a bookshelf all by myself. I followed all the directions, used real tools, and it looked like the picture when I was finished. Jay Shetty suggests trying one new project or hobby a month to discover one’s purpose. He calls it sampling. It’s similar to the way your mother may have insisted you try new foods. You don’t know what you might like unless you explore something new. Very few of us can say we took on the career we wished for as a child. We grow and change. We can’t know what it is we enjoy doing, what brings meaning and fulfillment unless we try out different things. Many of us still don’t know what we want to be ...

When someone asks me what I do for a living, I’m a little embarrassed. I’m a director of admissions at a nursing home, but as soon as I say, “nursing home” most people either wrinkle their nose and change the subject, or go on about how they admire people who work in nursing homes because they couldn’t do it. Nursing homes aren’t dark, smelly places where old people go to die, in case that’s what you were thinking. Our facility has wide hallways, large courtyards, and lots of windows. It doesn’t smell any more than anyone else’s home. We have all kinds of wonderful people who live and work there. We have former factory workers, homemakers, salespeople, writers, bookkeepers, artists, farmers, and everything in between. Each person has a story, if you take the time to listen. One of our restorative aides gave me a poem today that reminded me how special the caregivers for the elderly are: If We Don’t… Hold their hands, Dry their tears, Try to calm their fears ...Who Will? If We Don't...

I was going through my twitterfeed, and two quotes struck me. British prime minister Gordon Brown said in his address to US Congress: "We conquer our fear of the future through our faith in the future." (Reported by NPR's Andrea Seabrook). Author Leonard Sweet said (twittered), " True faith is not our firm hold on certain truths, but trust in God's loving, sure hold on us." Faith. What is it? Is it looking with blinders on, neither to the right or left, but clinging to what we've always known? Is it boundless hope, caught up in the idea that if we wish hard enough, what we want will come to pass? As wonderful as Mr. Brown's speech was: " So we must educate our way out of the downturn, invest and invent our way out of the downturn, and re-tool and re-skill our way out of the downturn;" I don't have faith in the future in itself. I pray that God has mercy on our nation and the nations of the world and allows for a less stressful ...