My Day of Hope

Hope crept in on the dreariest day of the week. Even though it had been raining all morning and the temperature was planning to hover only around freezing, I shoved my sunglasses in my pocket and headed out to the lake on my bicycle. That small flicker of hope kept nudging me to wish for just a bit of sunshine. I'll tell you about my "day of hope" after I tell you why I needed it so much.

Getting through February, the shortest month of the year, had dragged on endlessly. February pretended to be the longest month of the year. The bleak weather had been holding me hostage for way too long. Many of the times when I did get out, the bleak lives of my neighbors at the halfway house for people with mental illness had been haunting me.

I had been having a lot of trouble trying to process the sadness that stuck to me after my weekly visits. I'm talking about a place where the smell of cigarettes, and stifling heat make you want to throw open every window despite the freezing temperature outdoors.

Each week I cram myself into a tiny little elevator, virtually nose to nose with four or five of the residents, and try to make small talk with "the Pope" or "Princess Diana's relative." I visit a woman who is so paranoid that for 4 weeks in a row, she could not get out of her bed. She would lie there, flat on her back, telling me how scared and how sick she felt. Her husband told me that he couldn't get her to drink water because she was too afraid to go into the bathroom. The tiny cluttered room has barely enough space for the twin beds that she and her husband sleep on. There are no locks on the door and people wander through the halls mumbling and arguing.

I have been struggling with so many questions. Are my short weekly visits really making any difference? Why does anyone have to live that way? How can anyone get better without fresh plants, pets, sunshine, space, and fresh air?

The biggest question that haunts me is this. Why do we warehouse people?

Now, back to the day hope replenished my spirit. 

Two days before "my day of hope" when I had walked along the lake, deadly silence had muffled the shoreline. The entire lake all the way to the horizon had looked like it was frozen solid. I have lived near this lake for many years and have never seen it like this. No waves lapped against the rocks, no sun even dared to peak out from behind the clouds. The cold stony ice produced nothing but cold dead silence.

The next time I ventured out, was my "hope day." Yes, it was raining like crazy. Yes, it was freezing cold. No, I didn't need my sunglasses. But yes, hope began to sneak back in on the songs of the birds who seemed to appear out of nowhere. The huge lump of ice slowly melting and floating away was somehow carrying off that huge lump of despair that had been lodged in my throat.

Then I realized it. My hope is in you! Maybe you can help me to carry hope to others. Hope is not heavy like despair. It is light and can be easy to carry if we do it together.

Could you take a look around where you live? Take fifteen minutes, a half an hour, or an hour each week to visit someone who lives in an isolated or unhealthy environment? It could be a nursing home, a prison, or a neighbor's home that needs a friendly face.

You don't really need to belong to a volunteer organization. You can walk in, talk to a social worker, or the activities director, and ask to visit someone. Or maybe when you meet someone on the street who needs a friend, make a plan to visit that person, or take her to lunch. Maybe..... just maybe....it would break up the day or help that person to understand that he or she deserves to be loved.

By the way, after my "day of hope" at the lake. My neighbor who couldn't get out of bed, got up and sat in a chair, smiled at me and asked me to bring strawberries the next time I visit. You bet I will!

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.


Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;


Therefore, we are saved by faith.


Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;


Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

Reinhold Niebuhr