With Hope

I’ve been thinking about hope this year, that fragile confidence Emily Dickinson described as a songbird with feathers, perched in the soul, singing against the wind and the coldest of circumstance. The writer of Hebrews calls faith the substance of hope (Heb. 11:1), and after listening to the podcasts below, I realized more deeply how faith and hope and love work together in each of us. Without hope, my faith is ambiguously directed, a nebulous cloud. Hope gives my faith and belief direction and purpose in prayer and perseverance. Love fills in the gaps. Love reveals the lies that I am only loved for what I do, or for how much I do for others, or for how much money I make, or how wonderful my children are, or how lovely my house is decorated. Love reminds me I am more than all of those things. And so are you.

This week, I took Olive to another appointment for her mouth, another specialist, another medical team member to help us chart what the next decade will look like for her and her mouth. For those who don’t know: at the end of January, the girls were playing in the front yard with our 90 pound one year old Lab puppy, when Olive’s legs were take out by the line. She flipped, face first onto the sidewalk and incurred serious mouth trauma leading to emergency oral surgery. If your stomach churns a bit reading it, you’re right; it was horrific, but I am overflowing with gratitude that she incurred no brain or bone damage. I haven’t shared any images of the journey here or on social media for Oli’s protection, but she is healing so well. Her stitches are long gone, her spirit is just as large and vibrant, and her smile is just as magnetic, only missing several teeth. Wink. Of the several missing teeth, only two were adult teeth (her big ones, front and center). Apparently, it’s a more complicated fix because of her age, hence all the appointments and conferring specialists.

On the way home from this particular appointment this week, Olive had a lot of questions about the path forward, and clearly I had no answers yet. I empathized with her. She wants to know what’s coming next. In many ways, I ask the same questions, always looking forward and planning where I’m headed, how or when a particular hard spot in the path might correct. I again apologized and assured her we’re progressing, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Then she turned to me, with a bright and confident tone, so full of hope, and said, “It’s okay, Mom. It’s like Auggie’s Mom says in Wonder, ‘The Scars are only the map that show us where we’ve been.'” Immediately, tears sprung to my eyes. Those words were for me. Those precious words, spoken with a toothless lisp, so full of hope and promise, so confident that her needs would be met, were for me.

Sometimes we think we are the ones teaching our children about the world when it turns to be the reverse. As adults who have tasted and seen the bitterness in the world, the unmet expectation and disappointment, it can be easy to feel swallowed up, to allow those experiences to cloud our imaginations or ability to see beyond. Our world is ripe with heavy, chilly circumstance, and chances are if you aren’t currently walking through something difficult, you know someone who is. Yet hope is the songbird that sings against it, that reminds us that the scars in our life are a part of our story, but they do not define our path forward.

ENCOURAGING LISTENS

“Get You Hopes Up” part 1 and part two

“Hope in All Circumstances” 

“Hope is a Strategy”