survival and an old dog learning new tricks

“Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!” So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

(my new neighbor is NOT a dog / Julie Cook / 2022)

Often when we reach a certain age in life…
an age where there is more life on the backside rather than what’s
on the front side, we have the tendency to become rather complacent.
We cling to the notion of ‘been there, done that’…in that we think we’ve pretty
much done, seen and experienced most everything that there is to experience.

We settle in while making ourselves comfortable.
We become glibly set in our ways of both coming and going.

Status quo seems to be the name of the game and if it’s not hurting, broken
or missing, all is well.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, a seismic shift is felt…life happens.

Apple carts are upset.
Everything is turned upside down.
The norm is anything but
while we are suddenly left with a foreboding sense of trepidation.

And that’s when it happens.

That innate prewired sense of fight or flight kicks in.

It’s a better learn quick moment vs the consequence of ‘or else’…
The ‘or else’ situation is where one is left with the results of either surviving
or dying.

I think most of us are prewired for survival.
It’s in our nature…or so it seems.
Or at least it is in mine.

Now don’t get me wrong.
There have been, and continue being, plenty of days when I could readily pull
the covers over my head…
Nay, prefer to pull said covers!
All the while yearning never to emerge from bed…this as the thought of getting up
to face yet another day of the unknown, the painful, the troubling
leaves me weak-kneed, nauseated and flat out scared.

The tears come and go like fickled summer showers..popping up
when least expected or wanted.

And like those unexpected showers, they quickly come and go.

So as I begin to push my way through this thicket of the unknown.
I find myself charting new waters or rather waters I’d thought had been charted
and finished long ago.

So whoever really said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks might
never have known that some old dogs simply need to learn those new tricks
in order to survive.

Here’s to surviving while moving forward…

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect,
but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.
But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward
to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14

Forged, annealed and refined

“Life’s a forge! Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You’ll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and you’ll scarce know what’s happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal’s worthless till it’s shaped and tempered!”
― Lloyd Alexander

“I will bring the one–third through the fire,
Will refine them as silver is refined,
And test them as gold is tested.
They will call on My name,
And I will answer them.
I will say, ‘This is My people’;
And each one will say, ‘The Lord is my God.”
Isaiah 48:10

Temperatures escalate unbearably as salty sweat drips from a weary brow.
A strained arm crashes forcibly downward as metal strikes metal.
Deafening sounds reverberate off surrounding walls.

The hammer hits again, over and over
as the bellows work furiously pumping life into smoldering embers
The hotter the heat the more impurities are expunged.

What makes a metal precious?
Is it easily forged?
Does it corrode?
Is it strong?
Does it conduct a current?
Does it possess a monetary value?
Does it hold a luster?

Is it not the heat?
The fire?
The hammering?
The beating?
The cooling?
The polishing?
Is it not the work,
the forging,
the tempering
which exposes the value?

The focused hand raises the hammer.
The soul lays bare on the anvil.
The continued strikes disperse the molecules.
As it is thrust, without regret, back into the fire.
Heated throughout until glowing red,
The hammer strikes again.
Suddenly without warning is the emersion
The cold water drawing back the stretched fibers

Over and over, again and again
in and out, heated and cooled. . .
Until what was once weak, dirty and unrecognizable,
is finally made strong.
The sheen now reflecting the image of the
satisfaction of the blacksmith.

(*****Thank you all for prayers yesterday for my son. We don’t know much more than we did before the procedure but that there is no surgery for now, just more meds. The thought is that there may be nerve damage, of which Prayer, most assuredly, will be what is imperative to the healing process—I am grateful for the continued prayer of healing)