The Game of Hope

Hope as the "expectation of something desired"(Oxford Dictionary of Etymology); sometimes expectations go unmet. Random House Webster's augments this definition by noting that hope is "to look forward to with a reasonable confidence", reminding me that perhaps there are times of unreasonable looking forward to. The greater our expectations and desires...the greater sadness when our hopes go unmet. And, while there is perhaps room for "hope against hope" theologically, sometimes the psychological reality of lowering our expectations is a better survival option. Creating space for hope then feels like a game of limbo. We keep lowering expectations in order to avoid disappointment until we have few hopes and lose our balance altogether.

This has been a week in which hope has taken a bit of a beating. My dad returned the hospital this week, and while he is doing much better today, it was a nerve-wracking week from 3000 miles away. With each bout of illness, I come to terms again with the reality that my hopes for a warm father-daughter relationship have gone and will most likely go unfulfilled. Hoping for a different relationship with him does not rise to the level of "reasonable confidence", and yet hope dies hard. I had a reasonable confidence that my son's dad would follow through on his child care commitments, and he fell through yet again this week. And I have challenged myself to not so lower my expectations that he is able to meet them. Yet, it's not easy. And finally, I got through the week with the backdrop of expectation for bringing my "friend, friend" to a special event. This definitely rose to the "reasonable confidence" barometer given that he committed a few weeks ago and hasn't fallen through on any commitment in the six months I've known him. Unfortunately, he forgot and double-booked himself which we realized only yesterday. The disappointment here clearly exasperated by the dashed expectations which have largely characterized my week. He is still working to "fix" the situation, and while I am hopeful, I also recognize that I could be disappointed.

In the middle of all this, I've had some friends who have listened and done their best to help. One gives voice to my sadness when I seem unable to do so myself. Another reminds me to speak truth and yet another encourages me to grieve. If truth prevails, that is a form of hope. And finally another friend, who, when I posed the possibility of him doing me a big favor to help me with my dad dilemma responded, "I will work out whatever needs to be worked out!". Some people simply rise above our expectations....turning the game of limbo into one of hurdles..how high can you go!

There are hopes that are reasonable and some that, perhaps are unreasonable, and hope in people is always dicey. The big hope I need to not sacrifice to the limbo of lowered expectations is that all disappointments are not the same. Some who mess up can't be trusted to or are incapable of fixing things. Still, there are some people who when they mess up do, indeed, do all they can to "put things to right", as N.T. Wright coins in. And there are still others who put things to right even when they had nothing to do with what went wrong. And, I need to be careful not to let even a few major disappointments cause me to let other exemplars of hope fulfilled, such as these friendships, fall down like a series of dominoes.