When Hope Needs An Upgrade
The season was mid-December of 2016. My second restaurant had just closed and the collateral damage was about to doom my first. Tension at home was high, and thus home was a place I wanted to avoid.
My safe place was the mall, where I would retreat from the wintery cold and walk laps while listening to sad music with my headphones on. The ubiquitous happy-holidays sentiment was a weird juxtaposition against my inner turmoil. But it was an adequate, yet ironic place to ruminate on what my next step should be.
One evening after one of these mall sessions, I came home and plopped down in my usual chair. I was alone in the house and in my aloneness, I spotted a Christmas candle on the side table next to me. It was a familiar ornament, a gift from my mom years prior, handmade by a local artisan.
It was oval shaped, about eight inches high, white with gold letters that spelled HOPE in all caps.
As I eyed the candle, I felt an anger rise up in me. Impulsively, I reached over and grabbed the candle that was mocking me, went outside to the garbage bin and tossed it in.
I returned to the chair and sat back down. I couldn’t help but ask myself why I did that, but admitted that it felt pretty good. I didn’t retrieve it.
I couldn’t articulate it then, but I now have more clarity on why I threw the candle away.
I’ve always held a strong sense of faith, even as a young child. After college, I decided to explore this sense further by going to seminary. On the first day of class, my favorite professor gave an introduction to the new student class that fall. The first thing he said after Good Morning, was unsettling.
“Many of you aren’t going to complete this work.”
I’ll admit it was not the kind of words a newcomer wants to hear.
He went on to clarify that statement by explaining that theological study is demanding and requires an honest evaluation of everything you believe. He described this ability as a gift, not as a life requirement and some are simply not suited for this kind of rigor. He had seen it enough over the years that he was preemptively offering grace to those who would find themselves packing up to return home after only a month of classes. He did his best to explain that there is no shame in this and it’s OK if seminary isn’t a part of your calling.
The word often used to describe situations like this is “weed out.” It’s an attempt to separate the good from the bad, the serious from the casual, the winners from the losers. This is an important way to think if I was building a Navy SEAL team or assembling an elite sports group. But I don’t buy/sell/trade in that language any longer as it pertains to matters of the heart.
I threw that candle away because my Hope wasn’t ready to face bankruptcy. It wasn’t ready to watch everything I had worked for come to an end.
My current Hope didn’t know what to do with a third diagnosis of ovarian cancer that would take my wife down with a year to the day of receiving the bad news.
My current Hope was passed its sell-by date, so it needed to be tossed so I could pick up a new one.
I made it through that season because of the Hope of others. They loaned me some of theirs while mine was getting an upgrade.
My new Hope came in the form of my bankruptcy lawyer, who told me he’s done about 1500 in his career and every one of them has made it, and there’s no reason to think I won’t be the first who won’t.
It came in the form of my sister who reminded me that I had lost everything, but I wasn’t a loser. My business failed, but I was not a failure. She helped remind me who I am.
My new Hope came over time, as the bleeding stopped and the swelling went down from all the trauma. The time brought perspective and perspective yielded clarity.
My new Hope looks different. It now wants to give everyone another chance, even if they feel weeded out. Because if it isn’t intended for the hopeless, I can’t call it Hope.
