Straight Paths - I Hope You Dance

I Hope You Dance

Loren Hardin

                 Shirley was in her seventies when she enrolled in our outpatient hospice services with terminal cancer. Shirley married at age fifteen and explained, "I got pregnant and then I got married, but I think you’re supposed to do it the other way around." Shirley reminisced about how she and her deceased husband, used to love to dance: "My husband had to have a few beers before he would dance, but I didn’t need anything. I just loved to dance. I really think I could have become a professional dancer. But my husband had a heart attack and he had to stop drinking, so we stopped dancing too. The kids were older too, so they didn’t need us as much anymore. So, we just started watching TV and going out to eat. I really didn’t enjoy it though. I was bored. We just couldn’t think of anything else that we wanted to do. It became a routine and we just started to mold." Shirley looked me squarely in the eyes and said, "Loren, promise me that whatever you do, don’t ever let yourself start to mold".

                 Shirley and I talked about the stages of life, how each stage presents us with corresponding challenges or tasks. We talked about how with each progressive stage we are challenged with grieving the loss of what used to be, reconstructing our lives, and reinvesting ourselves in something meaningful.  We talked about how, with the passing of each stage, we are presented with the question, "What else can I do?" We talked about how when we diligently seek and find the answer to that question, we continue to live.

    Then Shirley suggested, "This might be my last stage; and I won’t be moving on to another one. I’m stuck in this stage, and I can’t get out of it. I want to go back to another stage when I could dance." Then I suggested to Shirley, “But there is another stage, a stage that is eternal.”

                 "I hope you never lose that sense of wonder… I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean; whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens. Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance. And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance; I hope you dance.” (I Hope You Dance, by Martina McBride)

                 “Stop harking back to what you were once when God wants you to become something you’ve never been.” (“My Utmost for His Highest”, by Oswald Chambers)

                 Loren Hardin was a social worker with SOMC-Hospice for twenty-nine years. He can be reached at 740.357.6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can purchase Loren's book, "Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course" at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.