Month: November 2022

A message of Hope for the season

Ben Langford delivers a message of “Hope” to The Springs CofC audience.

I hope you keep reading this blog post. See what I did there?

Well, you will.

The church I attend, The Springs Church of Christ in Edmond, launched a series of sermons on the season of Advent this past Sunday. Our preacher, Ben Langford, presented it as a season of hope found in the birth of Christ.

Ben defined hope in the way that University of Oklahoma professor and author Chan Hellman, Ph.D., describes it in his book “Hope Rising: How the Science of Hope Can Change Your Life.”

Dr. Hellman’s definition of hope is, “the belief that your future can be brighter and better than your past and that you actually have a role to play in making it better.”

I read Hope Rising a couple years ago and was caught off guard by the definition. I always thought hope was something far more nebulous and random.

Sort of like “I hope rain doesn’t wash out the baseball game tomorrow, or “Gee, I hope you get what you want for Christmas.”

See, I’ve always believed that hope was more of a wish than something you could actually turn into an action item.

But Hellman’s book explains how people can set a goal, find a path toward its completion and then take action to reach it.

That sounds a lot like a goal setting exercise I learned in college.

In Hope Rising, Hellman demonstrates how the science of hope actually helps people who have been afflicted by life’s circumstances find their way to a better life from things like childhood trauma.

It’s not random or nebulous, but it does require some action by the person who’s hoping for better. It took a while, but I finally saw Dr. Hellman’s point about the “science” of hope as I read the book.

So, anyway, back to Ben’s sermon (watch it here). He made the point that people find hope in Christ by seeing the path to God and taking action to achieve it.

It was the type of sermon that stayed with you beyond lunch at Earl’s BBQ afterward.

I hope this blog post made some sense for you.

See what I did there?

Black Friday in 2008 was cold, dark … and fun

Shortly before 4 am at the Elk City Walmart store on ‘Black Friday’ 2008.

It was dark and cold on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving in 2008 as I left my mother-in-law’s farm outside of Hammon, OK.

At roughly 3:30 am on that Black Friday, I headed into Elk City to see what the crowd of shoppers was like at the Walmart store on the west side of town.  The store was scheduled to open at 4 am.

My wife and mother-in-law thought I had gone off the deep end.

But it was all in the name of work, because I had been asked by Clytie Bunyan, then the Business Editor at The Oklahoman, to contribute some color from Elk City for the paper’s annual Black Friday shopping roundup.

I rolled into the Walmart parking lot about 10 minutes before 4. The only spot I could find was at the far fringes of the lot about 100 yards from the store. The rest of the spaces were filled with vehicles.

So, I walked toward the entrance, where hundreds of people sort of jumbled together in not so much of a line but what I would call a crush of shoppers. There was a genuine excitement in the air as they anticipated nabbing the ultimate Christmas bargains that had been advertised to go on sale on an hourly basis.

It reminded me of the incredible lines of folks that used to wait outside the Apple store when a new iPhone was released. A lot of camaraderie.

Folks patiently waited for the doors to open and chatted among themselves. I talked to a few people about what drew them to this store well before dawn on the day after Thanksgiving. They came not just from Elk City but from surrounding communities such as Sayre to the west, Mangum to the south and, yes, Hammon to the north.

In the darkness, I shot what was a poorly lighted photo — it’s at the top of this page — with whatever digital camera I had at the time (not an iPhone) and posted it to my Twitter account.

Shortly after 4 am, the doors opened and the crowd surged forward. I waited a few minutes until it cleared and walked in. There were already lines at the cash register as people claimed televisions, toys and whatever the hot electronic item of the day was.

I sipped free coffee the store offered as I wandered through the aisles and managed to get comments from shoppers and store personnel about the Black Friday shopping experience.

My Black Friday early morning routine remained the same for the next few years.

2009-walmart


Looking back on this memory from a distance of 14 years, it now seems like the Good Ol’ Days of Black Friday shopping. Back in those days, grabbing a copy of the newspaper fat with holiday advertising on Thanksgiving Eve was the first stop for most shoppers.

In just a few years, stores started opening ON Thanksgiving Day, so there was no longer the urgency to head out in the pre-dawn darkness.

Now we’ve come full circle. Online shopping has made a big impact on how we approach Christmas buying, and most stores — including Walmart — will again be closed on Thanksgiving this year.

So, I guess early morning Black Friday shopping is back, although in what I assume to be a less frantic manner.  A Google search showed Walmart stores are opening at 6 am.

But, check your local listings, as they say. Here’s a link to a story in The Oklahoman that lists opening hours for OKC stores both on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. (The Wednesday paper this year was still fat with holiday ads.)

Yes, I fondly recall the camaraderie of that crowd of Elk City shoppers in the pre-dawn hours of 2008.

But I’ll still be in bed when the doors swing open this year.

My date with COVID finally arrived

ER room at Mercy
In the ER room at the Mercy Health Emergency Room along i-35 in Edmond.

I’ve read somewhere that COVID is eventually going to infect us all, but I had begun to doubt that it would catch me.

Until it did.

It’s been more than 2-1/2 years since our world was shook when the pandemic washed over us, beginning locally when the Utah Jazz-Oklahoma City Thunder game was cancelled on March 11, 2020.

That was a jarring, scary night, with both my wife and my mother in-law at that game.

Anyway, we masked up and stayed home much of 2020. Then just after Christmas of that year my wife had a mild COVID infection. She tested positive two weeks in a row.

I tested at the same time and was negative each time.

Also, I received the Pfizer vaccine in early January 2021 and declared myself bullet proof, even at my advanced age of 69. I’ve added two booster shots since then.

Then a little over a week ago I woke in the middle of the night with an unexpected, out-of-the-blue sore throat. No big deal.

But I lost energy and appetite throughout the next day, while adding a cough and tons of drainage.

By the third day, it moved into my chest and I had no taste or smell.

So, I went to a walk-in clinic. I was tested for STREP, Flu and COVID. The COVID test came back positive, which I was NOT expecting.

The doctor gave me some pills to take for the next five days, as well as a nasal spray. He said I should no longer be contagious after five days.

Things didn’t improve over the next four days, so by Sunday I walked into the Mercy Health ER along I-35 to see if I could find some relief. The health care professionals there were awesome and empathetic while giving me a steroid shot and hydrating IV.

By Monday, there was incredible improvement in my condition. I’m still improving and hope to be completely symptom free by the end of this week.

Meanwhile, what of my wife, who sleeps and eats with me? She had laryngitis while all of this was going on, and has been tested twice for COVID over the past week.

Negative, both times. So, it’s role reversal this time.

I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not bullet proof. I am thankful for the vaccines and boosters. Because of my age and medical history, there’s no telling how far down COVID could have taken me.

Now I’m up for the Bivalent booster in a couple weeks. I’m all in.