Hope

“Conventional wisdom tells us that hope is a good thing.

Hope is what gets us through difficulty. But over these

years I’ve come to realize that hope is sometimes slow

torture. When hope keeps you anxious and bitter and

stuck in some fantasy of the perfect nuclear family,

then maybe hope isn’t what you need anymore. Maybe

the most hopeful action one could take would be to

abandon hope altogether.”

~ Catherine Macraw Hockmuth; The Blank Space in Our Family Album


“And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion,

dark and silent and complete, I found freedom.

Losing all hope was freedom.”

~ Fight Club

It would be impossible for me to recount the number of times or ways I have been encouraged to hope:

• "Don't give up hope..."
• "Hope is the only thing that can't be taken away from you..."
• "It will happen for you if you just believe / wait for the right time / trust God / hope..."
• "It's awfully soon to be thinking about adoption, don't you think?'

They’re different words but they all say the same thing: “Hope”. They tell me hope is good and hope is beautiful and hope is the way to go; and they tell me something else, too. They also imply that without hope I am nothing but a cynic – that if I cannot hope or if I choose to stop hoping this reflects a character flaw, something ‘bad’ about me. Only bad people don’t hope. Only weak people can’t bear the burden of hope. Only chronic pessimists refuse to believe against the odds. If I don’t have hope, I don’t even have good character to fall back on.

I believe that most people who so firmly believe in hope have had little of true value taken from them. It’s easy to believe in hope when the greatest desire you have is for a nicer car or your greatest dream for your child is a decent education or the greatest adversity you face is trying to find enough time in the day.

It’s easy to hope when the biggest thing on the line is a bit of disappointment.

I am not a stupid girl. I understand that there are natural laws. However, I also believe that things turn out right a ridiculous amount of the time. Whether that is because there is some sort of god who looks out for us or simply because the natural laws tend to fall that way, I don’t know. But what I do know is that things turn out right a ridiculous amount of the time – not all the time.

Sometimes things don’t turn out right. Sometimes things end badly, even if you had faith. Sometimes things go wrong, even when you’ve refused to give up hope.


Choosing to hope does not mean that your hope will be fulfilled.


For the last 6 (almost 7) months, everyone has been telling me not to give up hope. Everyone has been telling me they just know I’ll have a baby – which is easy for them to say when they don’t come home to my empty house or have to come up with the $ for my latest pregnancy failure (anyone have $1,700 laying around I could use?). It’s easy for everyone else to be hopeful for me – it requires very little investment. And so they tell me not to give up hope.

But guess what? I don’t have any hope. And right now that’s okay. Right now that keeps me from obsessing. Right now that spares me from my deepest fears. Right now that lets me live instead of just being alive.

Right now, my complete and total lack of hope for my baby gives me the energy to hope somewhere else:

• I hope I raise $1,500 for the AIDS Walk.
• I hope to refinish the woodwork in my house.
• I hope to love my husband well and to make his life better for having married me.
• I hope to learn to love people well.
• I hope to learn to live in community.
• I hope to publish my writing.

These are all things that have been on the back burner for the past 6 months because they require energy that I was busy expending on hope and everything that comes along with it.

I truly believe that hope is a burden to bear – there is no need for hope unless you are disappointed or unfulfilled – or hurt or dying or just trying to survive another day. Right now, I lack the strength to carry that burden. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It doesn’t mean I am a cynic. It doesn’t mean I am a weak person. It doesn’t mean I lack character. It simply means I’m letting go because I can’t live with the havoc that hope wreaks on my life.

I know I have a breaking point and I love myself and that people around me too much to cross it. Don’t ask me to hope right now. Don’t ask me to step past that point. I think it is true that hope is “sometimes slow torture”. Maybe – just maybe, hope isn’t what I need anymore. And maybe that’s okay. Hope for me all you want – are friends not supposed to carry one another’s burdens? – but let me live in hopelessness right now. Let me live in freedom.