On Hope

The embodied weight of hope in this season.

I am on a run when my phone rings, an unknown number which I ignore as per usual. Then it rings again, same number, and I remember a group is using the building this morning, maybe they have a question. I stop running and answer, trying to catch my breath and slow my racing heart, when I hear a familiar voice on the other end. One I’ve been waiting for, one I’ve heard go from eight year old pitch to bass notes slipped in the cracks, and finally settled into a low register bright with laughter. Today, there is no laughter, only need. We meet, he cries, we pray. Adam and I lay our hands on his broad shoulders, wipe his tears, remind him who he is, who we have always known him to be.

Later, I am showering, letting my own tears fall over brokenness, over hurt that multiplies then divides and multiplies again. I realize that I am determined not to get my hopes up, telling myself this will probably be like every other time, a false turning point. The end of the rope, except he will find more rope. Rock bottom that somehow still has deeper depths to plumb. After all, if I don’t get my hopes up, I can’t be disappointed, right?

Dickinson said that hope is the thing with feathers, perched in our soul. This sounds lovely and ethereal and poetic, but I really need my hope this season with a little more substance. I need something solid, something that can sit heavy in my bones and settle across my shoulders, flow through my hands in prayer to his shoulders. A delicate flit of wings feels a little futile against the steady-marching beat of hurt and loneliness and poverty and addiction.

Which is why, this season, I am choosing to remember the embodied weight of hope. The stubborn audaciousness of a hope that doesn’t disappoint. I am getting my hopes up.

It’s advent season after all, and advent starts with hope. We start with waiting for hope to appear, so that’s where I start too. December 1st, the day before Giving Tuesday, the beginning of the end of 2025. The last month of a year filled with questions and hurt, and also brimming with hope and joy. Both/and.

My hopes are up that this is a turning point for a boy we love. That this is a new beginning, that on the other side of his healing is his freedom, rooted in the kind of hope that does, in fact, have wings. And the stubbornness of my hope today believes that if this isn’t a turning point to freedom, it’s not yet the end of the story. Of his story, of our story.

Hope, this season, looks like an answered phone call and a safe place to come for prayer when you find yourself at the end of your rope. A place of love, of support, of hope, of healing, and of freedom. Want in? Want to get your hopes up with me this season? Join us in choosing hope at the end of 2025, join us tomorrow for Giving Tuesday. Thanks to World Outreach Fund, every dollar you give will be matched up to $10,000 tomorrow!! Double hope, with wings.