thankfulness and hope

The phone rings . . . caller ID says ‘unknown.' Dilemma: Answer, Ignore or screen the message?  Having a new business I should answer as every ring could mean a new client. Preoccupied and focused on a work task, I hesitated and every ring brought interruption.       

     

You know you’ve been there.  Involved in an activity enjoying yourself and the desire to stop is edged with a slight frustration. 

I found myself recently, looking at the phone. Cradled in my hand, I hit answer.   

“Hello?” Static was my reward. No answer. “Hello?” Unable to hear a response,

I hung up. The phone rang again. “Hello?” More static. Hang up. Then a text message flows . . .“it’s Sam, call me.”

Sam?? OHH, Sambo! A friend of decades but a friend I have not spoken with in over a year. I‘ve stalked her on Facebook periodically over the months however, and thought about calling her numerous times. 

     

I punched redial and heard, static! Frustrated now with cell phones and totally out of focus from what I had been doing, I sat the phone on the desk and stared at it. Magically it rang! I shook my head, smiled and answered, “Hello?”

“Suess, it’s Sam!“ YAY! At last, we connected! “Sam! Hey, girl, what’s going on?”

     

For the next hour, we chatted about children, jobs, husbands, the 2011 Missouri tornado and its horrific aftermath, cancer, remission, trips taken and hope for the future. We bantered. We laughed. We interrupted each other. We listened. We spoke from the heart. We renewed our friendship . . . as we’ve done every year for decades.

We landed hard on the topic of hope. Hope for a different future for each of us. Hope that overcomes the yucky, hard stuff in life. Sam looks forward to deep changes in her life in the upcoming year. I am hoping that much changes in my life this next year.

Sam said that in the Missouri area where she lives, suicides rose drastically after the widespread tornado leveled whole towns. Residents, despairing after losing their material possessions and grieving the loss of family and friends, gave up hope and took their own life. That tragic fact staggered me. Thinking about the hard times I have experienced, I felt tears springing to the edges of my eyes. Suicide? Why? Why add even more hurt, sadness and pain? Why? 

    

I have looked at each of my children as the huddled by death’s door as infants.  I have looked at cancer and seen it’s lumpy masses under my own skin. I have looked at depression as it violently warred within family members.  Yet, I never once thought the answer was suicide. For me, my life’s mantra has been relentless hope. Hope that endures empowers and encourages. Hope that overcomes, overachieves and overextends. Relentless hope for all of life.

I wondered what Sam believed. I asked aloud …”what makes the difference, do you think between those that have hope and those that lose hope?”

“Thankfulness. From what I have seen, the people who are the most thankful possess the most hope,” she responded as one who witnessed much.

I think she is right. Cultivating thankfulness can be learned. Thankful for the air we breath, thankful for the sunrise. Thankful each morning presents a new day. Thankful we exist. Thankful the experiences were not worse. Thankful the bad part has past. Thankful for the past. Thankful for the future. Thankful we can try again. 

Thankful for . . . memories, dreams, wants, desires, opportunity, possibility. Being thankful increases our hope tenfold. Thankfulness does not diminish or ignore the hard, sad, senseless tragedy that we experienced but thankfulness can make life worth living.  Tornado's wrecked pure hell on Missouri.  My sick babies, each fought for their life. Cancer loiters in my DNA waiting to reemerge.  

     YET I CLING to RELENTLESS HOPE! 

HOPE that better days are ahead. Stubbornly and steadfastly, I hang onto Hope.      I hope that joy will return, that kids will grow up, that houses can be rebuilt, that cancer stays in remission, and that life will return. 

Life may return differently than before but life will go on.

No matter what happens, I refuse to give up my Hope.

That interrupting phone call lingers in the corners of my mind. For days, I’ve thought about our exchange.  Smiling when I think of her, I marvel how we’ve hung onto threads of a relationship for almost thirty years.  And I hope…hope that we hang onto each other a little closer this year so when my phone rings again, I jump to answer!

Thankfulness and Hope...do you have 'em?