I don’t know if I have hope or denial.
I’m a bright side, silver lining, glass half-full personality. Optimism almost always tints a rose-colored outlook.
It’s probably annoying.
My natural cheer usually channels hope, but in these uncertain times, when information I don’t want may very well be imminent, I could just as comfortably duck into denial.
But so far, so good. Or at least so good enough.
I work for a non-profit organization that is considered an essential service. Kids to Love meets the needs of foster children. While most of our tasks have been accomplished through the internet, we gather at the office on Thursdays to pass food boxes to local foster families. I’ve enjoyed the on-site camaraderie with my co-workers.
When I leave work on those days, I make a one-stop grocery shop before I return home.
Work. Shopping. Home.
It feels normal, minus the masks.
My husband and kids are my truest tribe, and I find immense contentment sheltered in place with them. Texts, phone calls and six-feet apart sidewalk chats have sustained my (shrinking) extroverted streak.
We socially distanced around a firepit last Friday night to share S’mores with friends. When the girls climbed into the car to leave our house, Lily said “We haven’t been in here in forever!” I guess when you’re 8 years old, 4 weeks feels like forever.
So, for the first time in forever, we opened up the gates, or at least the garage door. The girls may as well have been riding a magic carpet, experiencing a whole new world. (I told you. Devotion to Disney runs deep.)
As a mom, I’m only as happy as my unhappiest kid. Thankfully, I have pretty happy kids. Friday night, seeing friends in person instead of on a screen, they were ecstatic.
Their enthusiasm poured into the weekend.
Abby Kate cranked Carrie Underwood music and danced through the living room Saturday morning, wearing her Bluetooth headphones and belting out “I am invincible, unbreakable…”
And, for the most part, she has been. She is blissfully unaware (as she should be) that her world could collapse with one news conference.
She’s counting on Governor Kay Ivey to make things right this Thursday. I’m tiptoeing around reality, setting expectations that Alabama may not open for business, and even if it does it won’t be in the ways Abby Kate wants.
One summer camp was cancelled last week. The second one is still to be decided. And the idea that school could scrub next year is enough to park a dark cloud even over my sunny self.
I don’t know if I have hope or denial.
The word “hope” came to me in an unexpected way earlier this month. My artist friend Misty mailed me a lovely, handmade postcard. “Hope” is inked on the front. Her note on the back offered it as art for my fridge.
But hope, especially this version, belongs in a frame.
I believe “hope” has become one of the most wasted words in our language.
“I hope it doesn’t rain today.”
“I hope (insert favorite team here) wins the game.”
“I hope the WiFi is working.”
Those expressions don’t convey the kind of depth and endurance the word deserves. The kind of hope I’m clinging to right now.
I have loved this definition of hope ever since I read it 2 years ago. It is from the book “5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit” written by Nicki Koziarz.
“Hope is not a wish; it’s a holy confidence that faith will give us the strength to push through every hard and trying circumstance.”
Genuine hope, that holy confidence, commands reverence. That’s why it is so closely connected to our faith.
They work together.
The children’s choir at our church, before the Coronavirus struck, was practicing their spring musical: O Chicken of Little Faith.
It has been weeks since they’ve rehearsed. Still, the lyrics have lingered. At dinner last week, Lily began to sing:
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for-
And faith is assurance about what we don’t see.
You see we trust that what’s before us our God knows.
And in ev’rything we trust our God is in control.”
Perhaps a performance was not the purpose of their practices. Perhaps the play was preparing them for this season they are living.
I don’t know if I have hope or denial.
I can’t imagine a world without entertainment, relationship and connection in our usual ways.
Denial.
But I’m confident that whatever life looks like on the flip side of the Coronavirus, we will be OK.
And that gives me hope.
“Let us hold unwavering to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.”
(Hebrews 10:23)
