Most of us wander through life searching for a modicum of happiness. Just what brings joy will vary somewhat from person to person. There are those who need little more than the dawn of a new day of possibilities to feel a sense of satisfaction and others who appear to be constantly seeking some unknown evasive goal. As we go about our business each day we never really know what will happen to us. There are surprises and tragedies and routines awaiting us. Most of us work hard, plan, prepare, and even pray for blessings. We faithfully follow the rules, take care of ourselves and those around us and follow a steady course. In the back of our minds we almost always believe that we should somehow be rewarded for our diligence and good faith. The reality is that such recognition doesn’t always happen. We are not immune to disappointments, rejections, challenges, loss, and even death. All too often we have to shoulder responsibilities and hard times that seem unfair and may even prompt us to question every aspect of who we are and what we believe. Maintaining optimism in the face of severe hardships is a daunting task and yet we have all witnessed those incredible individuals who somehow find the strength and the will to do so. Continue reading “Let It Begin With Me”
Author: Sharron Burnett
Forty Seven Octobers
My husband, Mike, once took one of those personality tests at work. When the results came back the psychologist announced that he was a quite an interesting man. He noted that Mike was highly principled and that he would maintain his ethics even in the face of unbearable peer pressure. Interestingly his profile also showed that he was a man of few needs who actually enjoyed working alone. The psychologist joked that if the company gave Mike a cardboard box with a lightbulb in which to do his work, he would be perfectly satisfied. In other words, Mike is the strong silent type. He’s John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Gregory Peck all rolled up into one person. He is who he is and he doesn’t worry a bit about what others may think of him. He’s a great foil to my uptight, worried, sometimes easily swayed tendencies. Together we have somehow managed to forge a partnership of forty seven years that works beautifully. I suspect that if I were allowed to enter a time machine and relive all of them I would eagerly repeat our life all over again. Continue reading “Forty Seven Octobers”
Walking Uphill
As we grow older we often romanticize our youth. This doesn’t just happen with those of us who are sixty something, even adults as young as thirty or forty are often guilty of viewing the newest generation as being far less industrious than ours was in “the old days.” We all know the kind of thinking to which I am referring, “When I was a kid we had it hard! We got up at the crack of dawn and walked a mile to school in the snow, uphill, both ways! Kids today are spoiled!”
The truth is that the world is constantly changing and children learn to adapt to things as they are. During my long tenure as an educator I often heard my fellow teachers complain that the quality of students was declining with each passing year. In fact during my first few years in the classroom a very sweet older woman mentored me and her mantra was that I might consider another profession because the students that we had were the absolute worst in her memory. Since I had no basis of comparison I saw them differently. In my mind they appeared to be mostly polite, hard working, and eager to learn. Even until the very end of my career I saw that the young men and women with whom I interacted were teenagers not so different from me and my friends when we were in high school. They simply faced a completely different set of challenges from the ones that were ours. Continue reading “Walking Uphill”
The Journey
We have a tendency these days to travel quickly from one place to another. Planes are often our preferred mode of transportation. There are obvious benefits to leaving Houston in the morning and enjoying dinner in San Francisco. Making our way across long distances by car takes so much longer and requires a certain amount of patience. Still there is something far more intimate about a road trip. It allows us to begin to truly understand the geography and the people of our country. We get a better sense of the grandness of this nation and the hard working spirit that keeps it moving from day to day. Continue reading “The Journey”
The Place of Peace
When the newly formed Confederate States fired on Fort Sumter to begin the conflict known as the Civil War citizens gathered on the verandas and balconies of the homes along the Battery in Charleston to celebrate what they believed would be a very short engagement. Almost a year later the battles lingered on and it would be three more years before the bitter feud between what had once been united states finally ended. The cost would weigh heavily on both sides, especially in terms of the lost treasure of young men.
In 1862, both Confederate and Union armies had been gathering in a place that was unfamiliar to most people. In Corinth, Mississippi the convergence of two railroads provided the main supply routes between both the north and south and the east and west of the Confederate states. It was imperative to the rebel troops to hold that city in their grasp. It was also understood by the federal troops that to gain a foothold there would be a major blow to the Confederacy. Continue reading “The Place of Peace”
