05/15/2022
From Steve - This Thing Called Hope
On the campus of Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, two streets divide an otherwise massive parking lot into more manageable parts. These streets intersect in front of the main entrance to the building where I received my new kidney, and are named, appropriately, Hope Drive and Healing Drive.
I recently stood at the intersection of Hope and Healing and observed something that I still can’t get out of my mind. Though Hope Drive is located in the middle of a parking lot, the street itself has no parking spaces. No off-ramps either. Not even a deceleration lane.
On Hope Drive you’ve got to, well, drive. Idling in place isn’t an option. After all, this road isn’t called, Hope Rest Area— it’s Hope Drive.
That’s when it hit me: Wyatt, if you Hope is going to get you to the Healing where you say you want to be, you’ve got to keep moving.
In my oft-interrupted life, I’ve witnessed this principle at work many times over the course of my story. Hope isn’t hope unless you are pursuing. Hope is something you must do.
Hope isn’t an emotion that you feel, though we all certainly can, and at times we do, have a sense of hopefulness that lifts our spirits. Hopeful feelings can also lead us to embrace a new day filled with challenges and opportunities with optimism and a joyful spirit.
But hopeful feelings are fleeting. They come, but then? They just as quickly go. But hope itself? That rock-ribbed, strong and secure “anchor of the soul” hope that the Bible talks about? Real hope is not an emotion, it’s what you do.
Just yearning for a better story isn’t hope. That’s just “wishing upon a star.” It’s what you feel when you “hope” you win the lottery or you “hope” to get a refund this year. You don’t know, you’re not sure if it will happen, but you’d really like it if it worked out that way.
But when hope is really hope, it’s an action that you take. It’s a behavior you put into practice. It’s an attitude that persists even in the face of insurmountable odds.
Before you debate my premise, may I show you a word from the Bible that I drilled into during those long, interminable months on dialysis?
“We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” [I Thessalonians 1:2-3, ESV]
Wow. Do you see what I saw in those words?
Faith isn’t just something you should “have,” as in “have faith, brother!” No, faith is work. It demands an effort.
And love isn’t just a warm, fuzzy feeling that changes as often as the spring weather— real love is a “labor.”
And then there’s hope. Hope— if it truly is hope— it’s “steadfast.” Another translation uses the word, “endurance.” In other words, hope hangs in there— regardless. You may lose your job, your home and even your health— but even then, real hope presses on! It keeps holding on. True hope keeps moving, steadfastly, in pursuit of healing.
Please don’t overlook the implied action: Reaching your desired destination will demand from you work, labor and endurance. Those aren’t lean back in your recliner words, those are words that will make you sweat!
But there is great value received when you put in that effort. Please note what all this work will lead you to: Faith. Love. Hope. The Bible calls that trio of heroes the three highest and greatest virtues in the world. The qualities of life that will outlast all other things. There is nothing greater— nothing— than faith, hope and love.
But getting there requires effort. Faith is work. Love is a labor. Hope demands endurance. In other words, there will be sweat. Because these ultimate qualities will not come to you— you must go after them!
During the last three and a half years since my kidneys failed, this was my fiercest battle: To stay in a place of active hope. Everywhere I looked, my story felt grim. My future was uncertain. My strength was systematically draining from my body.
You’d think I had already learned how to do hope after my late wife, Cindy, stopped by heaven to see Jesus. Or when everything I had spent my early ministry years building was suddenly ripped away. Or when I started a new thing at 49— a time when all my peers seemed to be coasting.
But that’s the thing about hope. Although hope is a learned trait, it is never fully learned. You can’t just complete the syllabus, ace the final, get the diploma and then graduate on to the next big challenge. You are a life-long student in the university of hope.
As I sat in the dialysis center, the single-most depressing room I’ve ever known, I would listen to my fellow pilgrims who had clearly lost hope. They would slump into their chair and then, three and half hours later, they would slouch home. Oh, they wanted hope, , but the endurance to pursue hope just wasn’t there. And I got where they were coming from; I battled with those same feelings.
But hope is something you do, right? So instead of waiting for Healing to come to me, I went after my Healing! I pressed, and I pushed, and I prayed. I made calls and did research. I took ownership over my own care. I just never let up.
Ultimately, it was a God-thing that brought me to where I am today. It’s a work only He could do. But what I could do, I had to do. So I did. I pursued Hope.
I’m concerned about my grandkids on this front. I watch as they struggle to live in hope— especially since the pandemic. But it’s not just children. Precious few of us aren’t also struggling after more than two years of an on-again, off-again lockdown, vaccines and boosters, social distancing— plus masks hiding the faces of the people we’re trying to do life with.
But my grandkids? The pandemic represents the first really bad thing that has happened to them— which isn’t an altogether awful thing. Sooner or later we must all learn that life is gonna fling lots of mud our way, so you might as well get used to it. Resistance training is the only way you will learn how to endure, how to keep pressing on regardless.
For too long in my life I had it all wrong. I thought hope was something I needed to feel. And I needed to feel it deeply enough so that my feelings of hope would carry me to the other side of whatever current ordeal I was going through. But that’s not how hope works.
For decades, it seemed as though everything I touched turned to gold. But God wanted to teach me how to do real hope, so He directed me down a road less traveled— a road marked by all kinds of chuck holes and roadblocks. My path was so rocky, in fact, I had to do a total re-boot of my life three different times!
And now, my new kidney is Restart #4. But I’m learning that when my life is in tatters and everything I value is scattered to the winds— it’s then that I learn the disciplines of hope. Perhaps too late for what just happened, but wait till next time! And there will be a next time— when I must, all over again, keep enduring again, which is the essence of hope.
How do we learn this thing called, hope? The learning begins when we refuse to release our grip on a better future— and take steps, painstakingly, in the direction of a far better future.
Hope is hard work.
Hope can only be learned in the heat of battle.
Hope is only achieved through your scars.
Here’s my advice: If you want to learn how to hope, find someone who’s been knocked around by life, but who is still passionately following Jesus. Watch him as he limps and ask her why [or how] she keeps walking. If they are truly veterans of hope, they will, at first, claim to know nothing about the subject.
But don’t listen to what he says, watch what he does. Take note of the tear stains on her cheeks. Observe his white knuckles, swollen from constant use, simply because he will not stop clinging to hope even when there seems to be no hope.
That’s how you learn hope. And then? You do hope by moving in the direction of your healing. Trust me, you’ll be bad at it at first. Because the mastery of hope takes practice— and you will never fully arrive. But keep repeating the effort and keep moving toward healing, and like a muscle, your hope will grow from repeated use. Your endurance will increase.
Please don’t lose hope. Because without hope, you won’t survive. When all hope is gone— you’re a goner. Or, at the very least, your endurance and joy and energy and courage is gone.
The greatest qualities of life simply evaporate in the absence of hope. All desire for life fades. And death can’t come quickly enough. I know. I’ve seen it. I’ve been in that space.
Here’s my prayer for you today: That the “God of hope [will] fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” [Romans 15:13]
About me: I know I owe everybody who has supported me and prayed for me a comprehensive update— and I will give one. But I had to get this piece written first. But it will come soon, I promise. For now? I’m doing awesome. “Way ahead of the curve,” according to my doctor, which was music to this hard-charging, Type A, high-achiever. Until then, thank you for everything. I am overwhelmed by the love that’s been shown to me.
