When Hope Fails (lessons from the homeless shelter)

Ever been disappointed at Christmas? Maybe Santa didn’t bring you the gift you wanted, or maybe you found out that Santa isn’t even real. Ouch. Lots of disappointed kids out there with that one.

I regularly see both disappointment and hope in the front office of our area homeless shelter, where I volunteer once a week. Bed-seekers come in almost every morning, carrying what few possessions they own, sometimes with a baby on the hip and toddlers trailing behind. If we have a bed available, they start the screening process. But often there are no beds available, and we tell them to check back soon, because it could change over the course of the day. Then sometimes they wait while we copy their ID cards and get them on the list. Other times they leave, going who knows where.

This week I met a woman who had crashed head-first into her own loss and disappointment. She was probably middle-aged, attractively tall and thin, with shoulder-length blond hair. At first I thought she was a bed-seeker, because she walked with a slow slump, punctuated by a nervousness that I usually see in those needing a place to stay. But she didn’t want a room for the night, she wasn’t homeless. She just had something she wanted to donate.

It was a white plastic bag, which she clutched tightly as she held it out to me.

“Do you accept donations of personal products?” she asked directly, almost coldly. Her voice was strong and clear, as if she had rehearsed the words many times.

I could tell she had been crying. Tears stuck to her eyelashes and threatened to spill over, though she was doing her best to keep it together. When I gently smiled at her and said that yes, thank you, we will definitely accept donated personal products, she did not smile back but continued with her rehearsed statement.

“Some of the boxes have been opened, but the individual packages are still good. I can’t use them anymore… I just had a hysterectomy. I just thought I would give them to someone who can still use them.”

I thanked her and asked if she wanted a donation receipt, which she declined. Then she left. I watched her from the window as she walked away, and noticed that she made it to the parking lot before she reached up to wipe the tears from her eyes.

Deep disappointment. Pain and loss, grief and brokenness.

I don’t know anything about her, besides what she told me. But I do know that she won’t ever be okay until she accepts that a baby will not grow within her womb. She must accept it, or the disappointment will ruin her life.

We’ve all been there at one point or another, when we can choose to accept things as they are. Acceptance of reality is a doorway to real hope. That’s because those who find real hope have finally let go of all the false ones, the dreams that nobody ever promised us. We weren’t ever promised happiness, wealth, health, a perfect family life, success, beauty, youth, or even physical comfort. False hope always disappoints.

This Christmas, rest your hope on something true and eternal – a baby. Not yours, or mine, or the one you wanted but never could have. Not the grown baby you already raised, or the kids who still actively need your help moving into adulthood.

Rest your hope on the baby that was born in a manger, in some corner of a dirty barn because there was no room at the inn. That’s real hope – not this shiny, glittery, materialistic thing we now call Christmas.

Real hope does not disappoint us.

Finding Hope: two questions

My kids say that I’m the best finder. The irony is that I actually lose things all the time, so I guess being a good finder is more of a necessity than anything else. My secret is asking the right questions. These two questions – “where did you last see it?” and “what does it look like?” — are central to recalling information of any kind.

“Where did you last see it?” gets us to the frame of mind from that time – what we were doing, why we did it, what was happening around us. This usually jogs our memory and we can go find the lost item, or at least track down someone else who might know where to find it.

“What does it look like?” is an equally important question because our brains use the process of elimination to identify objects. For example — if I’m looking for a carrot then we can know I’m looking for something orange, and usually not any other color. This sounds simple, but it is actually a highly complex, multistep process in the brain. If your parents taught you that carrots are purple, then the whole system goes out the window when someone asks you to find a carrot. Navigating a salad bar would be a nightmare.

If you’re still reading this, you probably want me to get to the point. Quick. So here you go:

Where did we last see hope? If we can remember where we last saw or felt hope, then maybe we can backtrack what got us to that feeling and then figure out where it went next. If whatever we were hoping for failed to happen, then we can look back at our own motives, and what was happening around us at the time. If our hope was fulfilled, our emotions after that event will tell us much about our own thoughts.

What does hope look like? This is tricky, much trickier than finding a carrot. We might say that we feel hopeful when the stock market has several good days in a row, because then it seems more likely that another good day is around the corner. But it’s important to really look at this thing called hope – to analyze it, study it, and know its characteristics — because sometimes what we call hope is really just wishful thinking. And if we go looking for the wrong thing, we might end up with a plate full of radishes instead of carrots.

Hope does not disappoint us (Romans 5:5).

Take the Hope Challenge

Have you noticed that true hope is hard to find lately? And it’s getting worse… possibly worse than ever before. Try this checklist to see if your corner of the world is losing hope:

• You go to a store and observe the faces streaming through the check-out lines – most look drawn, stressed, tired, and discouraged.
• More and more people are escaping from life through entertainment, because actually living their own lives is too overwhelming.
• When you try to find hope, it requires that you: 1) buy something, 2) join something, or 3) “like” something on Facebook.
• People everywhere are distracted by their phones, and unable to focus on real conversations in their midst.
• You turn on a family-friendly radio station, only to hear commercials implying that you can’t feel comfortable or happy with yourself unless you get laser-hair removal or microdermabrasion.
• Tired of commercialism, you go to church for some real hope… but when you arrive, you see shiny promotional banners all through the building, selling the latest “life-changing” new way of viewing Christianity. Then you are told that you should buy the book and a T-shirt.
• Technology seems to be causing more problems than ever… and you wonder if the movie “Gremlins” was prophetic rather than fictional.
• Any effort you make to live a simpler and more authentic life is strongly opposed from all sides.
• Any message you hear about simple hope in the Good News of Jesus is complicated and difficult to understand for some reason or another.

Do you agree with me that true hope is becoming more difficult to find in our digital culture? Why or why not?

Take the Hope Challenge and start looking at – really seeing – the world around you. Do you see people who have hope, who know how to give and receive hope, or do you see people who are becoming increasingly distracted and hopeless? The best thing about the Hope Challenge is that you don’t have to buy, join, or do anything. You only need to start observing the world around you.

 (Note: This is the beginning of a new series called “Traces of Hope… in a world less human.”)