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

From Orphan to Soldier to Nurse

So what’s stopping you from becoming the person you want to be? I know from experience that I can talk myself out of just about anything by making excuses centered around my “dysfunctional childhood” or bad breaks in life. But when I hear about people like Bayelign Mamo I am encouraged and inspired. His adoptive father, Dr. Rick Hodes is so proud of him that he has sent a letter asking for congratulation cards to be sent to Baye.

After you read his amazing story, I hope that you will find it in your heart to send a letter or card as a word of encouragement. 

Baye lost his father to a war in Ethiopia and then his mother to a famine. As an orphan, his only hope of getting food was to join the army. But he was so thin from not having regular meals that the army wouldn't accept him. So Baye found another way. He borrowed a pair of long pants, filled the pockets with stones, weighed in again and finally became a soldier in hopes of getting fed.

The war did not go well. At one point Baye barely escaped alive after becoming trapped behind enemy lines. When Ethiopia eventually lost the war, he and a friend hoped to make it to safety by jumping onto an Ethiopian Navy boat and sailing out to the Red Sea. 

The problem was no country would let them dock. They wound up living on a deserted island with 3000 other guys for more than 2 years. Eventually when they became repatriated, Dr. Hodes hired Baye as a house guard and then adopted him into his family. 

One day when Dr. Hodes asked Baye what time it was. Baye confessed that he couldn’t tell time and in fact, he couldn’t read or write.With all this war, famine and destruction going on in his life. There had been no opportunity for school. The other kids in the family taught him the alphabet.

And then at age 20, Baye entered the third grade. It was hard to sit in classes with the little children and Dr. Hodes says that learning didn't come easily for Baye. But he persevered. Eventually Baye learned enough to get accepted to Central University Nursing School.

"I was impressed with their education: it was serious, and comprehensive," writes Dr. Hodes

"I've never seen Baye happier than when I brought him 12 pounds of standard medical and surgical nursing texts from America so he could study them."

Last Saturday Baye graduated from nursing school and is now an RN with hope for a bright future.

Wouldn't it be fun to get lots of people to send him cards and letters of congratulations? Please send yours to:

Bayelign Mamo 

c/o Dr. Rick Hodes

PO Box 7600 

Adis Ababa, Ethiopia

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

Nelson Mandela

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible: and suddenly you are doing the impossible." 

St. Francis of Assisi