Hope

When did I first meet Hope? I was young… very young, and even then she seemed naïve. It was early morning and I awoke from my sleep in the back of our station wagon. It was time to say goodbye to my dad as he deployed. He’d be gone at least 6 months, though I had no concept of time. Hope tried to console me then I remember, but I did not know her. She was there, present the whole time, yet never the center of my attention.

That’s her way. She does not draw too much attention to herself. Hope always shows up on account of others, encouraging and supporting our love for them for their own sake. She does not make herself the center of attention, but is always there for you… in the background. It was years before I took any notice of her at all. There, years later, in a time of solitude and isolation she came into focus. And I recognized her! She had been there all along, faithfully by my side. And it was then that I came to love her.

How patient she had been, waiting for me to recognize her! And now in our union, she has produced Patience for me in my own heart. There’s no denying it, Patience is more like her mother. Soft, quiet, content just to be herself. And yet, there’s something stronger in her than I had in my own youth. She’s still young, but she’s growing.

It’s a funny thing when a father has to learn from his child. He’s been too thick headed to learn in his own childhood, so he must learn vicariously from the childhood of another. And Patience is teaching me so much! One thing that’s struck me is her indifference to time. It holds no authority over her. It has a strange hold on me as an adult, but not over her.

Even as she longs for a thing, she does not want it in her own time. Rather, she wishes to have it in its own timing, knowing that the right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing. In this way she has taught me the value of receiving a thing and not just taking it for myself. In the receiving of a gift, I gain the thing itself, but I also gain a point of connection and relation to the giver. Patience is teaching me that. It is a lesson her mother has been trying to teach me all along.  

*Accompanying music for this post is January Wedding by the Avett Brothers. It can be found at the top right side of this post.

January Wedding, the Avett Brothers, I and Love and You