Find Hope By Giving Hope
June 14, 2020
Let’s think about hope. It’s easy to talk hope when things seem to be going well. It’s kind of like being happy about sunshine during the summertime. Or enjoying having a full head of hair when you’re still a teenager.
But talking about hope when there’s a pandemic going on, and when there’ve been massive demonstrations and even violence over racial injustice; when there’s so much social division and political polarization; maybe talking about hope in our present context can sound like a lot of wishful thinking.
On the other hand, isn’t this when we should be talking about hope? Isn’t it precisely during a time like this when we can feel lacking in hope, when we need it most?
It makes sense that we can attempt to take in all the big issues dominating our attention, and it can feel overwhelming and draining and demoralizing.
Whenever I find myself feeling that way, I know it’s time for a reality-check. It can be challenging to know what reality even is — sometimes — but pulling back and gaining a different and higher perspective always helps me.
Seeing things from a bigger perspective helps me focus not so much on myself and my fears and my sense of not knowing how to best respond to everything that’s going on, but on what I can do for others.
I like to be reminded of where hope comes from. Where it really lives. And in the huge scale of everything that feels beyond our control, to be reminded that there are some things we can control. Because one of those things is to reawaken hope, be in touch with hope, and live in hope.
During the First Century, the Apostle Paul wrote letters to communities of Christians. Many of those churches were doing fine, but many were not. His letters to some of those churches are what we find in the New Testament.
No one apparently bothered to save the letters written to churches that were doing great, that had no internal struggles, and suffered no persecution from their neighbors. “Glad to hear you’re doing swell; keep up the good work!”
But for those places where things were not going so smoothly, over the years people hung onto and copied and recopied and shared those letters. The First-Century church in Rome was apparently one of those.
In a brief piece of Paul’s letter to the Romans, one word keeps popping up: hope. So, we can safely assume an issue the Romans had, was they were suffering from a lack of hope.
We don’t know the specifics, but Paul does talk about their suffering. Chances are, it was a combination of things: internal struggles over how to understand the nature of their new faith. In those days people were still figuring out how to distinguish between Judaism and Christianity, or even if they should.
And external pressure: not knowing how to fit in and function in the larger society, and not be persecuted by their neighbors who had vastly different beliefs. All we know for sure is, whatever they were going through, they needed to hear a word of hope.
And their hope, Paul told them, could be found in sharing the glory of God. So we have to ask, what does he mean by the glory of God? Some think Paul was referring to what happens after we die.
But I don’t think Paul was talking about their future as much as their present moment. Because hope is not something you buy and save away for a rainy day; it’s something you need right now. And as dark as things might appear, that’s when the hope you need, shows up.
I heard a Ted Talk that was given several years ago by a woman from Australia, named Peta Murchison. And it was one of those moments when I had a reality check. About hope, and where to find it, and how to share it.
Peta started out by saying, “I am mother of two children. Toby is 4. And he loves playing with Legos and drawing. Mia is 6. She likes warm baths, horse-riding, and hugs.”
Then Peta paused for a few moments, and she said, “When my daughter dies, I will wash her and dress her. I will put flowers in her hair. We will play music, light candles, and hold her. And our family and friends will come to say their goodbyes.”
It was shocking. Here stood this young mother, telling an audience that she had a daughter with an incurable condition. And the topic of her talk that day, of all things, was hope.
My first thought was: “Whoa. If that’s her reality, and she’s talking about hope, then anything I’m going through — any anxiety, fear, any lack of hope — is pretty lame by comparison.”
Peta went on to tell her story. She said that she had been forced to think about hope, and now had the ability to see hope, in a situation that felt pretty hopeless. She said that living in grief meant that life became more illuminated. It made her realize the goodness in people. And appreciate all the good that was in her life.
Like flowers from a neighbor. Or hugs from complete strangers. Simple things that were unexpected and powerful.
Peta told about how before Mia’s diagnosis, she had been a normal, healthy, energetic toddler. Scooting around, singing songs, learning to count.
But at age three her behavior changed. Aggressive outbursts, lashing out at her little brother, pulling things off the walls. At first, Peta and her husband, Hamish, just thought they were really bad at parenting, and they vowed to be more consistent with boundaries and bedtimes.
And then out of the blue, Mia had a seizure. Doctors at first diagnosed her with epilepsy. But the seizures got worse over the next few months. Mia started falling down and hitting her head so much they had to find a helmet for her to wear.
And then suddenly Mia was struggling to walk and talk, and her eyesight was degenerating. They went through a whole team of specialists to figure out what was wrong, but the doctors were just as confused as Peta and Hamish.
Peta said there’s nothing that can prepare you for being told your child has no future. But that’s what happened after more neurological tests. Mia had a rare genetic condition that affects less than one out of 100,000 children. It’s called Infantile Batten disease. It’s fatal. The doctors said they were talking about years, not decades.
And within a couple of years, Mia’s condition would deteriorate to the point where she would be completely blind and unable to speak, and requiring their total care. It was too late for any enzyme or gene therapy.
So, Peta and Hamish shifted their efforts from fighting for Mia’s life, to giving her the best life for the time she had.
Their friends and family rallied around them and supported them. They held a fundraiser for Mia. Peta said the generosity and kindness of others was pivotal in their ability to cope. With their friend’s help they set up a social media campaign.
It wouldn’t change Mia’s condition, but it raised awareness about Batten’s disease and other childhood genetic disorders that are life-limiting conditions, and it raised money for research.
She said their family faced one new reality check after another. Of how hard it is to navigate the health care system in any country when your child has a condition like Mia’s.
They had no expertise in health care or rare diseases. And they experienced a sense of chaos in all the challenges of learning to care for Mia. And in navigating their grief. And in advocating for how she would be able to go to school. The endless appointments and the piles of paperwork.
And just in trying to ensure Mia had the best life possible in the time she had left.
In the midst of all that, Peta said she experienced something she knew was always there but had never fully appreciated: the most tender and giving elements of the human spirit.
An outpouring of acceptance at school from the other kids, who didn’t have to be told but just naturally acted in ways that were gracious and loving. Holding Mia’s hand, and propping her head back in place into the headrest of her wheelchair. Reading to her.
They stuffed letters and drawings into her backpack that would be discovered later. Notes that said, I love you, and you’re better than rainbows, and we are best friends. And invitations to birthday parties and playdates.
Peta said it was important for her to bear witness to all this, and that pointing out the beauty of humanity every day is a privilege to her. And to affirm that the incredible kindness she saw, gave her a new perspective: to be able to recognize and appreciate all the small but consequential human elements of connection.
Peta said she’s been kissed on the cheek by strangers in a doctor’s waiting room. She’s listened and seen the faces of exhaustion and fear in pediatric wards. She’s cried with moms who she’s just met whose children are also sick.
In her community — in-person and online — she’s experienced deeper connections of love than she would have known otherwise, because of a mutual need she had with others to do something, while feeling so powerless to do anything.
Mia, she said, loves the feel of water and setting atop a horse, and she couldn’t get enough of her parent’s hugs. Peta said that in all of this, she realized that the present moment was the only place where they wanted to be.
She was forced to live there — in the present — and let go of tomorrow and next week and next month. She embraced mindfulness and gratitude, unable to overlook — as most of us tend to do — that we’re all on borrowed time.
She said Mia taught her more than anyone in her life. How to be more patient, to not worry about the chaos and having everything perfect before you leap in and do things, and she taught her that it’s okay to be broken sometimes.
And that allowed her to focus on what really matters right now. To see that life is more vivid more beautiful more profound and meaningful than we so often stop to appreciate.
And she said, of course she understood how unspeakably sad life could be, in accepting that there was no cure for her daughter. And that one day she would no longer have her own body to snuggle up with at night.
She closed her talk by saying, “When I put flowers in her hair and friends and family come to say goodbye, I will remember the human capacity for hope is so strong, that even when you’re told that there is no hope, somehow you still manage to find it.
Three years after Peta gave that speech, Mia died, in 2018, at the age of nine.
But the hope that Peta and her family discovered — in what anyone else would say was a hopeless situation — that hope never died.
That’s the essence of hope. And I need that reality-check; that perspective, that even in moments that seem to be absent of hope, it cannot die. Because humans have an innate capacity for kindness and goodness and self-sacrifice and empathy. That’s how we’re created.
It’s true, we can be self-serving and jealous and petty. We can seek sometimes to divide for our own gain, rather than be a force for unity and healing. We can say and do dumb and hurtful things. If you ever see that happening, know that’s always an expression of fear.
But in the much bigger tapestry of human connection, what weaves us together is never fear, but hope. We have proof that it is real. We have a God who loves us, and invests our lives with a hope that is far stronger and more enduring than anything we’re going through.
We can wake up to the hope that’s all around us in this present moment. Appreciate that hope. And bear witness to that hope, share that hope, and live in that hope.
Because our hope is what we need, and what the world needs from us, now more than ever.
