Here, Hoping

I'm sitting at Mom's place, relaxed in the flowered chair, light from the round room east window glowing through the potted plant's leaves. A sparrow chirps outside, wind ruffles the tree branches, and a distant lawnmower shades the air with its hum. My heart feels a little sad and lost. I love it here. After the city's constant ruckus--the space and quietness, the layers of bird song, the big tranquil sky--seem almost alien in their wonderment and beauty.

Yesterday I pulled weeds from the back flowerbed. Beyond me, miles of fields spread to the dusty blue horizon anchored here and there by clumps of trees, blue green against the yellow green carpet of corn seedlings. Barn swallows and other birds zipped and flitted over the field. Three brown thrashers landed in the grass near the house. A wren investigated a birdhouse my brother made to hang in the ash tree. I love it here, and I cannot stay, and I no longer belong.

Even since despair began to dog me, I've remained convinced--deep down in the same place where I know that God exists and is personal and good--that there is true beauty and goodness sprinkled throughout God's creation. It can be found in stories, in music and landscapes, in wrinkle lines of a kindness and humor, in children's belly laughter, in the red of apples at the grocery store, in a pleasant greeting. It's all over, and sometimes we see it. I am convinced of this, but I struggle to accept my place in it.

In Psalm 139, David tells God, "I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well" (v. 14, ESV). Such a clear example of counting oneself a part of God's wonderful works, and yet it is so difficult to embrace that truth, to relax my soul into it and trust it will hold the weight. That's the thing about hope. Though necessary and wonderful, it is bitter indeed when it seems to betray. The fear of failed hope turns the act of hoping into almost a physical pain.

"The Lord is gracious and merciful," David says, "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all he has made" (Psalm 145:8-9, ESV). I sense God beckoning me forward, coaxing me to relax my clenched grip and embrace the sweep of change, to follow with Him far, come what may. And from my dark corner, my small voice replies, "I can't. I've tried before, and see where I am? The same hole. I always fall into this pit again. Always. And I am so tired, I would just rather be done, please."

And so, I seem to come again to the choice--the choice to believe what I cannot see, to trust God rather than the messages of my distorted perception. But perhaps that is not quite right. Perhaps my alternative is less a cold blooded, iron-willed choice, and more a cry for help. After all, "The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them" (Psalm 145:18-19, ESV). Someday, I hope, I shall see the beauty here, too.