“…Wherever you are is called Here,/ And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,/
Must ask permission to know it and be known.” (David Wagoner, Lost)
So many times in my life, loss has occurred beyond my control leaving me, at least in a temporary moment, with faded, watercolor shades of hope rather than the bold vibrant hope that is so easy to wield when life feels fair, comfortable, without overwhelm, anxiety, or fear.
Losing our first son just under halfway through our pregnancy…delivering his sweet stillness to a world he would never know, leaving empty spaces in hearts who had already envisioned his future.
A hurricane erasing a childhood home, the home of our holidays, of our memories…floodwaters forcing their way in, rushing to take hold, and not yielding until absolute destruction resulted.
Going to bed perfectly healthy, yet waking with hearing loss, an ocean of noise in my ear, and unsteady balance…a whirling harbinger of more than a decade of disconnect between my brain and my inner ear.
Contracting Covid in January 2021 despite taking so many precautions (when you work in a school, sometimes exposure exceeds human efforts in prevention) and never fully recovering…a new constellation of symptoms decorating an already overdone collection.
The genesis of each of these moments invisible, beyond my control or ability to prevent. Each with lasting, lingering impact I had not planned on or for. A fierce spiral of helplessness, of before/after comparisons, of negative what ifs fueled my brain and being each time, leaving my spirit exhausted and my hope muted.
But, that is the thing about hope. It rises with ease when we are on steady ground. Even when we stumble in the midst of mild tremors, centering and strengthening ourselves around and through the hope that is still visible, within reach, feels challenging but available. It is the wilderness of the unexpected, of the fear induced by lived experience that convinces us that hope is a futile act of privilege. Our hope muscle weakens, allows us to believe the lie that we are isolated and helpless in the face of the enormity, of this most awful thing.
Honestly, though, if I have learned anything, hope isn’t something that has to be born singularly of our own will and perseverance. Sometimes, we honestly just need to sit down with our fear, sadness, loss, (fill in the big thing here) and get to know it as a new, and maybe temporary, place of being…to make friends with it instead of fearing it…to find ourselves in it so we can see the path through. And when we sit down, that is when our community…those around us whose hope still sings a song that wields a reminder that beauty and goodness remain…steps up and in to hold hope for us. Community cannot transport us from the wilderness to the daylit path in a single effort, but it can shine rays of light that give us the courage to keep trekking because we are not alone, because there are still good things to come. They can make space for us to feel lost, they can use their voice to remind the world that the bad thing is true, to validate our experience, to allow for feeling seen even when feeling lost.
There is a lot of heartache in this world of ours. Instead of sinking into depths of helplessness, it is time to determine where we actually reside–the wilderness or the community. Do we need to reach out and rely on others to shine their lights for us until we find our way, or do we need to muster our courage and be the light, be the help, be the voice, be the good. Both spaces equally valid in a life, but it takes an honest heart to determine where in fact we are and how in fact to proceed.
Sometimes You Just Need A Poem 