It was nearly dusk when we arrived at the small white house, its faded shutters only partially visible behind the sheets of plywood that had been haphazardly nailed over its windows. It seemed somehow smaller now. It was as if the whole house had slumped its shoulders, breathed its last breath, and given in. It was hard to believe that only a few weeks ago it had been my home.
My father opened the car door. It protested with a loud screech that cut through the quiet air. “Stay here,” he said, “I’ll be right back.” I knew we shouldn’t be there, even an eight-year-old child could see that. “It’ll be okay,” he tried reassuringly, “I just want to grab some of my things.” I nodded silently and sat watching as the sun sank further down on the horizon.
I looked out the window, wondering how he was going to get in, as he slipped into one of the long shadows at the edge of the house. I waited with a fear that would not let me move even if I had wanted to. Moments seemed like hours when he finally returned, threw a bag and some belongings into the back seat, and forced a smile at me. But it wasn’t one of his real smiles. It wasn’t the one that crept across his face and into the corners of his eyes. That smile was gone, it had been replaced by this imposter-smile. “How about we go get a donut, okay?” he said shifting the car into reverse.
Sometimes, when you’re a kid and maybe even when you are an adult, things happen that you don’t understand. Maybe you find that the things that had been planned are instead postponed. And just when you think that life is taking you in one direction, suddenly, you are headed in another.
There is a quote that I love from the movie Hope Floats:
“Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts the most. So, when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.”
We’ve all had some scary beginnings. And we’ve already had some sad endings too. But mostly we need to remember that we live our lives in that middle space. Between the things that scare us and the things that make us sad. It is only in the middle that we can find a way to make peace with the past and forge a plan for the future.
Hope does that for us. Hope lives between sorrow and sadness. Between beginnings and endings. At times when we think we can’t go on. Or, maybe, when we have lost our smile. Hope provides the pathway to our dreams. It is ever-present and ever-abundant. And, it serves as the promise for expecting better things to come.
