What makes me hopeful?

Good Morning, I had never been extremely fond of the word “hope.” My dreams were dashed early in life and a lack of understanding the importance of being in the present moment did not enter my life until I had to dye my hair to keep from seeing the grey. Then one day, I looked in the mirror and said, “Your hair needs to match your wrinkles, so I threw away the dye bottle and faced the reality my roots could not hide.

Let me explain. If you are as old as I am you might remember the song, “Cry” by Johnnie Ray. There a lyric in it that says, “Remember sunshine can be found behind a cloudy sky, so let your hair down and go on baby and cry.” Hope doesn’t hang out where reality is denied. Why, because if you can’t let go of what robbed you of hope, you are stuck in limbo and I spent many years hiding out there.

During those years, I was given what I call “a blinding glimpse of the obvious.” I was extremely active in a twelve-step organization that supports the families and friends of alcoholics. I received a call from a young woman who told me her husband was hooked on both alcohol and drugs. She said they had a baby daughter and that she had left him and returned home to another state to be with her parents to sort out her feelings. She had decided with the help of her in-laws to return and make an attempt to reconcile if he would agree to get help. She explained that he was currently living with another woman and her daughter and that it was very hard for her to accept that he would want to be with this person and her child instead of his own wife and daughter.

I told her that we would welcome her to our 12-step meetings and that I felt she would find them very helpful. Before we said good-bye, I said I will be praying for God’s will in your life.

She responded with confusion in her voice. She said, “Surely it is God’s will that my husband be with me and his daughter.”

I found myself saying, “Your husband has free will and God does not mess with free will.”

She did return to town and attended a few meetings and then I did not hear from her for a couple of months. One day, the phone rang and when I said, “Hello,” she identified herself and she said, “I wanted to call and thank you.”

This time, I was the one that was confused. I said, “We’ve missed you at the meetings. What are you thanking me for?”

She said, “I wanted you to know that what you said on the phone the first time I spoke to you about free will has freed me. My daughter and I will be leaving tomorrow and I will be filing for a divorce. My husband refuses to get help and leave the other woman. I need to get on with my life and make a life for our child.”

Hope does not exist in limbo but it flourishes in reality.