A Hand to Hold by Hugo Venegas

We have eyes and yet fail to see what is usually in front of us.

I have to admit that I am a victim of far-sightedness – the ability to see where my Titlist Pro V1 golf ball lands on a three hundred yard drive, yet sometimes fail to see the needs of loved ones three feet from me.

Yesterday I saw something on a social network site that was astoundingly revealing. It was a picture of a teen-age girl hugging her father. The picture had this youthful and beautiful girl with her right hand wrapped around her father’s waist. His left hand was thrown over her shoulder, dangling down over her heart. She had her left hand clasped to his big fingers.

The girl had a big smile that was brighter than the phosphorescent green top she was wearing. It was obvious that she was proud to be showing off her dad to her friends on the web.

This is what got to me though. The dad’s hand looked limp and dead. This girl, full of life, was gripping a hand lacking vitality and care. I was captivated by the father’s limp and seemingly lifeless hand. I then, proceeded to look at his face. A hand may lie, but a face seldom conceals what oozes from the soul. The dad’s face looked funereal and radiated the lugubrious landscape of a sad soul. I finally understood a mystery so near to me in my own family, which has eluded me all these years.

My youngest brother abandoned his three kids over decade ago. He is an irresponsible, chemically dependent, and self-destructive individual. Regardless of all his vicious and hurtful deeds inflicted on his kids – they still madly love him. I always wondered, why? Now I know.

Kids no matter how old they are, need and want to hold their father’s hand. We all have an inherent need to hold a hand that will give us affection, care and direction in life.

I will never forget the experience of rushing to a hospital to be near a friend who a few hours earlier had lost his entire family in a car accident. Those of us who had crowded his room did not know what to say to him. His father walked into the room, and this middle-aged friend, like a little boy cried out to his father in the agony of his soul. With arms widely stretched out in desperation, he said, “Dad! Give me a hug.” His father was not only shocked at his son’s devastating tragedy, but was also awkwardly shocked by his son’s request. A few seconds of the father’s arms around him, mattered more than anything that the cadre of intellectuals surrounding my friend’s bed could have said.

My eyes welled up with tears when it finally dawned on me, how powerful and comforting it is to the human soul to have a hand to hold on to in difficult times. It finally dawned on me, why, when at the last moments of my mothers loosing struggle with breast cancer, she asked me to hold her hand. I finally realized the meaning of my oldest daughter’s first action when she was born. Megan had to be taken away from her mother and placed into an incubator to receive oxygen because her lungs were filled with fluids. I snuck my hand into the nurse’s hole of the incubator and she instinctively gripped my index finger for the first four hours of her life on earth.

Whether it is a new born, a relative going through divorce, a friend walking out of bankruptcy court, or an old dying grandfather, we all just need a hand to hold.

A few nights ago I was on the couch with my wife and we were comparing our hands. I told her that her hands were big and sexy. But it has finally occurred to me why I have always been deeply attracted to her hands. I love being firmly gripped by her big, caring and gracious hand.

It is no wonder why an Internet story I read many years ago about the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle has left an indelible mark on my heart. The report stated that the capsule that housed the astronauts did not disintegrate with the initial explosion. It is said that the final words in the recordings recovered from the debris stated that the captain of the Challenger was heard saying to one of his female colleagues as the shuttle’s remains were rapidly descending into the ocean with the inevitable finality of their lives, – “hold my hand.”

Whether fact or myth, the story exemplified a deep longing of any human being – the need of a hand to hold to in times of trouble. So today on this beautiful Colorado morning, I will not be using my hand to place a golf ball on a tee with the hopes of a three hundred yard drive, but instead I am going to extend a hand of love, a hand of help, and hand of affection, a hand of direction to the people close to me.

 

Dead-End Living

Have you ever gotten up early in the morning on a particular day, simply to discover that your life was doing tiring and meaningless circles around a dead-end cult-de-sac? You are spinning your wheels and spending expensive fuel but going nowhere. 

What makes the journey so much painful is that you want to get out of the downward spiral, but you just don't know how. You want to make forward progress, you want to ride down satisfaction Avenue but once again you are trapped on dead-end street.

Traveling on a dead-end road deadens your spirit. It weakens your heart muscles of joy. You want a solution. You are tired of it and want to get out of a dead en situation and into joy filled satisfaction – you just want to know how go get back on the right road.

We have all been down dead-end road. We have the t shirts, the baseball cap and the tattoos to prove the fact – that we've all been there. We awaken to see a face in the mirror that many years ago we knew and loved. Vitality has been slowly leaking out of our tired bodies and weary hearts. We become consumed with unenthused chores around the home and the lifeless repetition of tasks at the office which cannot lead us to close the deal. The many calls and promises that can't land us a sale. We've all been down dead-end road.

We may hate to admit it, but we feel that intimacy in our relationships has become so routine and what frightens us is not the distance itself, but the fear that deep inside of us we have lost the gumption to fight for love. We see our children grow up and see them ride the bus of life with joy and big dreams, and the meaninglessness dripping out of our souls make us cynics of their optimism. We are just stuck on dead-end road.

The single person has spent so many lonely nights, that he has given up the fight of hoping that better days or better prospects will soon come. So he has learned to compromise and do the unthinkable – to go bed with loneliness – a friend without benefits. We have all been down that road and have met many interesting people who were so different from us but who were all, made in the same image of disappointment.

Some get so weary of the emptiness that they choose to pull the plug on life. Others choose the path of narcotics – and find the best way to still the voice of hope. Some chose to take God to court – to sue for what appears to be a cruel joke played on them on the cosmic stage of life. Yet, there are those of us who sense that deep within, there is a still voice - which softly speaks in the boisterous noise of cult-de-sac living – "there is more love, peace, and joy ahead." We want to believe, we want to see, we want to feel it, but we just don't know the way out. We lack the desire and the passion to pursue the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We believe it's there – we long, we wait, we hope, and we pray for it. We want the wisdom to know our way out of dead-end living. We want direction so we can make our way to our pot of gold.