A Good Catch

               Just this week, I had a “Me, too,” moment as I sat on the end of my bed getting my shoes on for the day.  When my husband (of 45 years) and I first started dating, he sketched a simple but impressive baseball player with straight hair poking out the top and sides of his cap dressed in a striped uniform.  The shirt on the young, almost cartoon-like boy says, “Aces” right across the chest.  At the bottom, right under his feet, my husband wrote, “Sure am glad I caught you.”  As I looked at the drawing with the familiar sentiment on the wall, in my mind I replied, “Me, too,” without initially realizing the connection to what has become a movement today.

 

               My “me, too,” means something very different from the terrible stories so many women are finally sharing.  Thankfully, the man who caught me loved me fervently, and remained happy with “his catch”-- and told me so--over all our years (46) before his sudden death last August.  He was a physical education teacher and coach, working alongside women and men who talked about how much they learned from him, how much they held him in high regard.  Unfortunately, there was an assistant principal at his school, a married man, who was known to treat the young office ladies in sexually inappropriate ways.  I would imagine stories could be told about him that would easily fit into the “me, too,” movement.

 

               At this time, it is and has been important for women, some very young women, to tell their stories, some bringing down very powerful and rich men in our society, because these ladies have spoken their truth to power.  Sexually improper behavior is pervasive, destructive and definitely not loving no matter what it may claim.  However, after my moment responding to my husband’s words, it occurred to me that perhaps we need to also be reminded that many men all around us, maybe our husbands, our bosses, our neighbors, our favorite celebrities, are not men behaving badly.  To the contrary, they treat others respectfully in what they say and what they do.

 

               Looking at my husband’s work of art and words of love bless me and remind me how very fortunate I have been to love and be loved by fine men—my husband and my father before him.  Let us hope that there will be fewer and fewer unfortunate “Me, too” stories and more occasions to celebrate the love that blesses and builds us up, as individuals and as a society.

Posted by Rayma Kay laughlin at 12:34 PM

 

A Future and a Hope

Usually the coming of a new year is something I welcome.  I may even try to use this “graduation” to a higher number on the calendar as a prod toward some improvement or change in my behavior or thinking.  However, after an all-encompassing newness has been imposed upon one’s existence as it has been for me with my husband Jim’s sudden death in August, forward thinking about the future almost seems impossible.  I remember as a teenager reading a letter my aunt must have written to my Mom or Dad when her husband died.  She expressed a similar feeling, even a “what future?” attitude even though she was much younger than I am with her three children still living at home.  It’s as if half of a person’s body has disappeared. 

               Hope, hopeful expectation of something good--this is a basic component in positive, purposeful living.  As God’s voice has resonated within me before, it does so again to nurture, to renew my ability to believe I will somehow move toward blessing.  Many years ago I became acquainted with a “big time” Bible verse in Jeremiah.  The prophet is telling God’s wayward people that even though they are about to be taken captive and exiled for a period of time, God will bring them back.  He tells them His plans are for good and not evil, to give them a future and a hope(Jeremiah 29:11).

For many years my attention has been on the “plans” part of this scripture and how God’s plans are only good ones.  But, now I find myself clinging to the latter promise to give a “future and a hope.”  As my future, at least the immediate one, still seems a bit illusive to me, I look to God’s word and His certainty to fulfill it.