They Were Done Trying

Can we find hope when it seems inextricably lost?

I am positive there is just no way to fix this. 

It will not get better.

I have said what I need and I am not going to live without it anymore.

I put my phone down, took a long drink of Tetley Tea and rubbed my temples.  That last statement was part of call number four.  Four angry people.  Four people who had hit their limit.  Four people who had one thing in common.

They were done trying.

I opened my laptop and prayed the thing would power up.  It’s been driving me to drink for about six months.  It threatens me at least three times a week with a blue screen flash and a beep that must cover up some heinous digital expletives. 

I don’t know why it is so angry at me.  I have never mistreated it beyond a couple inadvertent drops on the floor.  You would think I had been banging it against the corner wall.  Serious overreaction—this blue screen beep. 

I tapped the enter button repetitively hoping it would encourage the gizmos and gadgets to work in sync this time.  It fired up and showed me my files without fanfare after about 30 taps (out of mercy for my tired eyes and somber mouth, I think) then opened my files and called up my most recent research on why people are giving up.

It was not a new conclusion.

Hopelessness.

Hopelessness, as it always does, infested the subjects of the study as it had my four callers, with the belief that there is nothing more that can be done.  Thus, the conclusion that it is best to put it behind you.  It is better to move on.  Cut that problem out of your life.  The newest form of therapy says, set a clear demand (falsely labeled as a boundary) and when it is not met, cut ties and ban the ‘problem’ person from your life. 

This is a popular trend in professional counseling right now.  Don’t face the struggle.  Don’t go through the pain, healing, forgiving,  finding peace and often reconciliation.  No, no.  Just cut the problem from your life. 

I freely admit that cutting something or someone out of your life often feels easier.  It can free a person from the pain in the situation and even give a false sense of personal healing.  However, avoiding is not healing.  Demanding that something or someone go away as an antidote to pain is problematic.  Mostly, it sends the pain underground to grow roots and create an emotional cancer that eats away at healthy parts of the soul.

Hopelessness, though, is a powerful emotion.  When it drapes itself over a situation, the lie that it scribbles across the dark canvas is loud and clear.  Give up.  Sadly, in a world wrought with abuse, it is sometimes the only answer.  However, more often than not, the answer lies in two other emotional words.

Endurance and patience.

Hopeless people need renewed hope, not escape from hurt.  

Hope is not an order-and-delivery-in-fifteen-minutes word.  To return to am heart, hope requires accepting that there are no Taco Bell answers to some of life’s difficulties or relational struggles.  We cannot drive up to God’s spiritual window and simply order our desired answer. 

Hope arrives when we realize struggles are like homemade pot roast.  It takes a whole lot of time and heat to make it worthy of the dinner table.  Taco Bell has never created savory and mouthwatering meat.  Its food is simple, unoriginal, and flash cook delivered.  It is meant to be shoved down a gullet while driving.  It also causes indigestion. Pot roast, though, now that is a meal to linger with, a meal that leaves the body and heart satisfied and ready for rest. 

Hope remembers that things were not always this painful.  It seeks the little moments when slight victory rises like steam rising off coffee.  It jumps at those things that speak of good.  It notices.  It smiles at.  I makes good thoughts of those things that are often missed.  It refuses to focus on the bad.  It gives a person time to simmer or bake or rest in the pot so one can cool off and settle.  It clings to the belief that, in the end of a crisis, we most often have a glorious time with those we struggle with.

And so, once hope is rediscovered, it does so with the announcement that we must set ourselves to the long haul of love. The Bible of Christianity calls this endurance, but sometimes it uses its twin term, longsuffering.  Both are the kinds of words that make Americans wrinkle their noses and assure me that God wants them having the dessert of healing before a labored over dinner of commitment.  It’s so much sweeter, and without this stress of all that time in the kitchen.  Surely, if not received as demanded,  it is best to leave the situation and go find that sweetness.  Sadly, eating only dessert will eventually leave us sick. For health, that time in the kitchen is quite necessary, if not fun (unless you are like me and kitchen creations are a source of joy).

With a heavy sigh and another long drink of tea, I had to employ those words myself as I again explained four times that getting through difficulties and pain are not going to be easy and cutting them off will be akin to the pain of amputation, while running out to find something more fun will create long lasting and severe problems in one’s own emotional and spiritual health.

I know it is hard.  Still, it is true and it is the stuff relationships that endure enough fire to become incredible works of beauty.  Enduring difficulties with determined hope, while working on one’s own view of how to solve the problem, well, that takes patience.  It also takes endurance.  Sticking with it even though it may be stinking difficult, difficult enough to require sitting in a pool of one’s own tears.  This is the way of endurance.  It is also the way to incredible creative relationships that grow stronger through a lifetime. 

After two more cups of tea and all the phone calls, I only had two takers.  Hope seasoned and simmering.  The other two will require more tea.  I set my water pot on to boil and took a deep breath.  Then I focused on the good things in those conversations and redialed.  We would start there and then sprinkle in the rest.    

With some patience, I might get the truth through.  I would not give up.  I see good in these people and their situations.  I will endure until they see it too.