FINDING HOPE EVEN IN THE REAL WORLD

Jody Fernando

"That counseling ain’t gonna help no one," the speculation rolled off Marco’s sorrowful lips, no hint of their familiar bitterness. "We’re still gonna think the whole day about how he died. The driver was stoned—ran right into Dennis on the side of the road while the mother of his unborn child watched from their car. It just wasn’t fair, you know. All he ever did was smile."

My teacher-self paused slightly, there in the hallway, to ponder the meaning his words held. Just a week before, I’d sent Marco, once again, to the vice-principal for lack of respect. I’d never really bought into his tough-guy shell; nonetheless, he’d pushed the limit too far that day.

Yet through his words today, my original suspicions were confirmed—his heart was breaking, life was unfair, and he wanted more than what these days offered. With shrugs of "I don’t care" and "none-a-yer-business," he liked to pretend he was hopeless. But in the few words he shared, I suspected he was closer to hope than he let on.

As Carl says in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers, "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." This simple commentary seems haunting when one of the human stories repeats itself to those who have not yet experienced it. Grief is always new. Strange how it is not something to which we comment, "Been there, done that, movin’ on." Loss paralyzes us. The world appears to stop, as all that was seemingly urgent and important fades away.

A son loses his father and we all stop to weep. A mother loses her hopeful companion and our hearts sink in pain. After all these years here on earth, one would think we might be used to death and pain by now. No chance.

All these years here on earth, and I would think I’d be used to some death and pain by now. No chance. One of Willa’s human stories is now repeating itself, fiercely, in my life for the first time. While I am certain this story has been told over and over for generations, it still catches me off guard, sends me reeling, snatches my breath away.

I have been married for only a few months, and each month of marriage has grown more difficult than the last. The intimacy of such a relationship has forced us to face the depravity of our true selves. Truly, the heart is deceitful above all things; and it is in marriage that we finally are forced to face our long denied deceit of stubborn habits, selfish expectations, and unrealistic dreams. Disappointment surges as I grapple with the reality of truly knowing and loving everything about another despite his flaws.

Flaws, I chuckle, such an understatement of the tears, the fights, the misunderstandings! And yet, to overcome this trial, I must allow our intimacy to become far more ugly, painful, and revolting than I had ever anticipated.

We enter the counselor’s office with some trepidation, fearful that if we acknowledge our struggle it will destroy us. In that small room, a gentle, observant soul with a white board and a marker sets us off on a journey toward deep, no-holds-barred intimacy that takes a lifetime to develop—far from Hollywood’s fluff-of-the-month romance story.

This intimacy becomes the microscope through which I am examined without relent, inside and out. It smooshes me flat on its viewing slide, no cell left unseen. I am humiliated to be seen for what I truly am—yet also relieved to finally come out of hiding.

In the past, such transparency appeared immensely appealing to me. To know and be known beckoned as the pinnacle of human experience. Yet now that it is actually happening, it feels like it is the inferno. Put simply, I do not want my knight-in-shining-armor husband to be tarnished. I also do not want to acknowledge that some of the carefully crafted habits I have formed may be more harmful than healthy.

My starry dreams melt to realistic faults as I learn that, in marriage, we live with human beings, not human dreams. My high hopes crash to humdrum expectations as I face the reality that even I myself cannot measure up to my own standards of perfection.

In the pit of my stomach, I find now both deep disappointment and great hope in life. Sometimes I am tempted to sugarcoat my disappointments and pretend that life is just plain peachy, that I have no problems or sore emotions. Yet in this moment, I speak solely from the disappointment in that pit of my stomach. I speak from my own personal tragedy of life, "I so wish this story of pain and disappointment weren’t repeating itself through me." Then I sit back and let my long withheld tears fall.

Through my tears, unexpectedly, I read another’s story of tragedy with an odd hope: "We can use any tragedy as a stumbling block or a stepping stone," comments Glyn, a Lou Gehrig’s patient very near to death. "I hope [my death] will not cause my family to be bitter. I hope I can be an example that God is wanting us to trust in the good times and the bad. For if we don’t trust when times are tough, we don’t trust at all." (In Max Lucado, The Applause of Heaven, Word Publishing, 1990, 5).

On encountering these words, hope emerges from that same pit of my stomach. While the nature of my current tragedy stems from an entirely different experience than Glyn’s, I catch an oh-so-slight glimpse of those who face their own failures and disappointments and pain. I catch a glimpse of why it has come to me. In one fleeting moment, a glimmer of hope comes to the shadows of my disappointment.

And suddenly the glimmer turns to a beam and illuminates all that I am. It illuminates my fear to trust, to believe that hope may still be there even when all I see are shadows. It melts away the sugarcoated lies in which I have buried myself and shamelessly exposes my fear of transparency. In one slight flicker, it changes the lens through which I have been viewing hope.

The counselor puts her marker down, and grins subtly at the realizations we are making. Through tears, I look beyond myself to see my husband for the first time—a broken but redeemed soul encountering the story just as fiercely as I am.

From pits of despair, the psalmist often proclaims variations on the theme of "My hope is in you, my savior, my Lord" (as in Ps. 25, 42, 130). It is difficult to imagine that the psalmist’s picture of hope as a romantic sunset and trouble-free life. He does not allow for this misinterpretation when he speaks of his enemies attacking or his heart anguishing within him or his body wasting away. The hope of the psalmist stems from a view of his savior that outlasts his own tragedy. His hope stretches to a life beyond his own.

It is with this view that my own disappointment begins to mingle with hope. No longer is my tragedy characterized solely by its shadows. The light has shown itself, and I am stepping, albeit slowly, toward it. It may be that each remaining step will continue to hold some sorrow, struggle, and pain; I do not yet know. Yet as I turn to face the light, the shadow is now cast behind me.

What I do know is that Marco was right: hearts break, life is unfair, and we deserve more than what these days give us. It is only when I allow my disappointment in this life to surface that I truly understand how "hope does not disappoint us." When God comes to us at our most powerless moments, who among us is able to stand (Rom. 5:4-6)? Who among us even wants to?

—Jody Fernando is a freelance writer and teacher from Indiana. She loves blue skies, kind words, and sharing the giggles of her children with her fiercely beloved husband of six years.