Hope is used 129 times in 121 verses in the Bible. Currently, I have 22 “hope” items in my hair studio. I just counted them. I have never done an inventory. I don’t know for sure how many hopes I have because my “everyday” hopes were put away to make room for my “holiday” hopes. People give me gifts items with “hope” on them…Hope votive holders, Hope signs, Hope mugs, Hope jewelry, even a Hope pillow! It’s tattooed on my neck, in Hebrew. When my daughter Jessica requested matching tattoos, I told her that was the only one I would do! I must have well over 75 HOPES…I’m “hoping” to beat the Bible record!  

Over my lifetime I held “hope” for others: for Jeff through 3 lay-offs, for Jessica during her life-threatening illness, for Jeffrey’s search for a doable librarian career living with chronic pain, for our family through bankruptcy…but it wasn’t until 2011 and Jeff’s fatal car accident that HOPE held ME.

In my old kitchen in Penfield, I had three shelves full of knick-knacks, and hope was regurgitated all over them! I guess I always touted “hope” because it felt better than despair. There are a lot of dark roads in life. I know you know that. I was having a dark moment—4 months had passed since Jeff died. The last casserole had been served. The phone was silent. I was working two part-time jobs, trying to keep our home together for my suddenly fatherless 10 and 22-year-olds. No one was home. Feeling hopeless, I took every hope thing off the shelves and tucked them away where they could no longer mock me, and wept. I wept for the unfairness of it all. I wept for the future of my children. I wept for the cavernous crater that once was my heart. The tears felt healing, cleansing, and I moved forward in my day.

At dinner that night, my kids asked me, “Where’s the hope?” They noticed the shelves, though still full of stuff, were empty. I hadn’t thought about their reaction…honestly, I hadn’t thought they ever noticed how surrounded by hope our home always was…but obviously they did. I’d like to say the question shocked my system out of despair, but moreover, I think it held a mirror up to my soul.

Why had I collected hope all these years? What did hope truly mean to me? When did it lose its wayfaring ability to light my path? Was it so familiar that it became just another 4-letter word on a mug?  And how had I become so lost I’d put “hope” away and thought no one would notice…no one would notice me, the hope collector, had lost all hope?

Hope isn’t a feeling. It’s a thoughtful choice. It doesn’t naturally occur in our minds. It’s not bright-siding, or denial of what is, but rather a belief that the current situation is not all there is…It may be horrible, it may be wrong, but it’s not the end of the story. This too shall pass. Nothing stays the same, even hopelessness.

Stories of hope flooded my mind. Like when Jeff totaled his car in front of the Penfield Wegmans while I was shopping…that phone call “I was in an accident. I’m ok, but the car is totaled.” It was Black Friday…a very black Friday. I walked that long walk across the parking lot, yelling at God in my head, “you better show up! Jeff is out of work, our daughter is sick, we just went through a bankruptcy and now our car is totaled! You had better show up!” Only to find at the scene a woman flanked by two adolescents. She turned towards me and exclaimed, “Debbie! Is Jeff in that car?” Lynette and her family were missionaries from church. Home for the holidays, they came across the rear-ended Cavalier. While on furlough the past summer, they had an accident on the Thruway. Strangers had stopped to aid them. She told her children, “Whoever is in that car needs help, and we need to help them.” After transferring everything to my car, Lynette turned to me and said, “Rob and I have been asking God who we should give our car to when we return to Ecuador in January…do you need a car?”

Or when Jeff was laid off from Xerox March 2007. Devasted by Kodak 19 months earlier, it was quite a blow. Two months later, the doctors at Strong told us we had a very sick little girl. She was 6 years old, in pediatric intensive care after 28 ounces of fluid was drained from around her heart, and needing exploratory heart surgery. How lucky we were that she had Child Health Plus because all her medical expenses would be covered. If we had the Xerox family plan, it would have been financially catastrophic. 

The Israelites did that; check out the Psalms. They told the stories of God’s presence in their lives when devastation surrounded them—crossing the Red Sea, manna from heaven, water from a rock in the desert.  In the hard, they remembered God’s faithfulness, and their hope alighted anew. Blindsided by two terrible situations, layered with so much uncertainty and fear, how could I see any path at all?  I have come to believe that hope is evidence of God, through the Holy Spirit, knitting together the broken pieces of our lives, creating something new…a tapestry…a mosaic… I step away from the awful, cry a little (or a lot), rub my eyes, remember and let hope perch in my soul again.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

By emily dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.