Holding onto Hope

See what I did there?

This blog was a little harder for me to write because capturing, in writing, all that Hope is required me to dig deeper than I usually do. I feel compelled to write her story because, not only will she read it one day, but her story is one that everyone should read. 

Between 2011 and 2016, I had a recurring violent nightmare that I was on the ground in the midst of the wreckage of a plane crash. I was the only one there and I was surrounded by body parts and dead people. I was frantically trying to find survivors, while at the same time picking up the broken pieces of people's bodies and attempting to put them back together. It didn’t matter that they were already dead. I had to help them and I had to clean this horrific and tragic mess. I would awake sweating and panicked and the images I saw never left my mind. Each time I had this dream, it was more gory and violent and terrifying. 

There was never a doubt that this nightmare was my subconscious metaphor for what was happening to my life. 

A lot of people can say, “That’s the time my life fell apart,” and I am one of them. The timeline is easy for me to recall, and it remains so raw that each memory still brings tears to my eyes. When my sweet cousin took her life at the end of 2010, my universe turned on its side. The violent ending to her beautiful and kind Self called All Things Good into question. She was only 18, and I’d spent her entire life loving her. The whole family had. Everyone who knew her had. She was wonderful. But if Anita had lived in such darkness for so long, which we later learned when we found her journal, then the truth of the universe was clearly not Truth at all. Her death predicated a series of events that left the world I had spent my adult life building completely decimated. By the end of 2011, the pillars of my soul-house had crashed and my landscape burned. Each loss took reality and morphed it into something unrecognizable. By December of that year, there was nothing left of the world as I had known it. I had been reduced to believing that if I could just make my bed in the morning, that might be the best accomplishment I would have that day. 

While my faith was so shaken that only a sliver of it remained, I still prayed the most simple prayer of, “Help me.” I knew of only one, steadfast purpose, and that was my role as Mom. During those years, the girls and I experienced huge changes. In addition to the tragic losses I was somewhat able to protect them from, our family was going through a divorce and my new career required us to move across the country. Although my world was obliterated, I knew I was responsible for maintaining the weather in theirs.

Children are powerful and it’s no wonder Christ likes them the most. My role as a mother would turn out to be the force that sustained me through the next several years. That reality was one which hadn’t changed at all. Our bond was the truest beauty I had ever seen and it was one that I  was determined to focus on. Being a mother was the anchor that kept me from floating away into oblivion. They were light, life, and purpose. We did everything together as we experienced a new life in a strange place. While I had gone out on dates here and there, I would ultimately end up sitting there thinking, “Yeah, I’d rather be at home with Naomi and Rachel. You suck.” So, I stopped wasting my time dating. I wasn’t fit for it anyway, and I knew that. My focus was still on picking up that wreckage and putting things back together. Apart from the corners of my heart that were devoted to my job and my calling as a mother, there was nothing left of it to give to anyone. Its tenderness and sorrow regulated me to accepting that putting one foot in front of the other was all I could really do. 

I somehow knew this wasn’t the end of the line for me. Mostly because I believed that if Anita had held on a little longer, it wouldn’t have been the end of the line for her. So I had this belief that, one day, I’d come up for air and feel the sun again. 

It turns out that as soon as I felt glimmers of warmth, like the storm had finally begun to pass, and my heart was finally on the mend, Dan walked into my life. Just a month before we started dating, I had told a dear friend that I felt like I had something to offer and I was ready to give my newly repaired heart to someone. 

That was less than three years ago.  

Because Naomi and Rachel were everything that was perfect, I knew beyond any doubt that I was finished having children. I never second-guessed that decision. They were the Be All, End All and our relationship was a beauty that was its own amazing universe. 

However, there was one thing that those years of hell had taught me, and that was the reality that Reality can change in an instant. 

I don’t recall exactly when my heart softened to the idea of having another child, but I do know that as my love for Dan grew, I was more and more receptive to doing anything that would make him happy. Anything. 

When we found out we were having a little girl, her name was a no-brainer. She is a miracle. She is "You never know what can happen" personified.  She is the sunrise after the hurricane. Through the years, I had written about and explored the concepts and practices of hoping. I had hoped that when I  said, “If God isn’t the God of second, third, millionth chances, then the entire Bible is a lie,” that I was right about the God I had come to doubt. Naomi and Rachel were my redemption. Then there was more.  Then there was Dan....and after that, there was the family we created... and then there was this perfect baby girl. 

She is evidence that when it feels like the end of the line, we never really know what tomorrow will bring.  She is a life that never entered my mind. She is Divine Plans that were bigger and better than mine could ever be. She is a bright landscape after the controlled burn. She is steady breaths, one foot in front of the other; waiting, waiting, waiting; praying, praying, praying; perseverance through plane wreckage and swimming upstream; determination,  grace, joy, and redemption. She is....

Hope.