The need for hope
I have spent my life living on hope and optimism. Being told I was dying. Not being able to walk. My heart failing. My chronic pain. For each of these, and many more, I have held onto a supply of hope. Hope that I would be able to overcome what was happening. Hope that a better day would come and that things would improve or at least I would be able to adapt to my new reality.
I remember laying in bed after my back surgery when I was just twelve years old. My spine had severe scoliosis that got to the point that it was impacting my lungs and heart. Surgery could no longer be put off. The surgery was a terrible thing and used a combination of two procedures that have long since been abandoned due adverse results in the long term. After the surgery when I was out of the ICU, I just wanted to go home. The surgeon told me that if I could walk as far as the end of the room and back, I could go home.
Despite the pain I was able to do it, with the encouragement of my mother who was right there to help. They sent me home in an ambulance and my recovery took a long time. In a way, I never fully recovered as I’ve had back pain every day since then. But laying in my parent’s bed, unable to move, I was able to summon hope that within the next few months, so I’d be able to walk again. It took a lot of suffering, a second spinal surgery, and a near endless amount of physiotherapy to get me to the point I could walk without terrible pain. The few months I initially envisioned turned into more than a year. During all this, I kept the little flame of hope alive in my mind and it sustained me.
Throughout my life I’ve summoned this sense of hope to help me endure difficult situations, medical or otherwise. A favorite scripture of mine about hope, in the New Testament - Romans 5:1-5
1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
From a certain perspective, I can see how my trials have helped me. Like it says in those verses, my tribulations increased my patience and from that my hope. Looking at my trials in retrospect, I have attempted to find a positive meaning for each of them. Maybe it has made me a kinder person? Maybe it has made me more grateful for what I do have? To be honest, I wish I had not endured them. That’s when my optimism begins to fail. This puts a crack in the hope I hold in my heart. Sometimes I think it’s not fair.
Hope is like oxygen; you only start to panic when you have run out. Sometimes you need someone else to put the oxygen mask on you. I have found that asking for help requires courage but it’s well worth it and your hope can increase because of it.
Some things in life you can’t change. “Shane, you have an incurable disease” is something I didn’t want to hear but I must continue to adapt to that reality as my body fails and betrays me. What I am in control of is asking for help and trying to help others where I can. I have found helping others who are suffering eases my own suffering and can restore my own hope.
A friend once asked me, “Shane, I have cancer and I don’t know how to be sick. Can you help me?”. These are the times when I try to share my hope and optimism. I told them the importance of taking it one day at a time. That it’s okay to be afraid and that they had people who loved them who would help. That’s when I must dig down and create meaning from my trials and use that meaning to help others.
Gandalf had a good answer to Frodo in The Lord of Rings, when Frodo was heavily burdened with his responsibilities and the state of the world around him.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
For my time, I’ll try to help others and try to keep my own hope alive. My hope right now has ebbed away to a low point, and I write this to try to restore a little more hope in my heart. But more importantly, that the hope in the heart of someone I love is rekindled so that they can endure their present burdens. Thank you for reading and I wish for your hope to grow as well.