we won't bury our hope

August 29th is a really hard and horrible day for myself, people I love, many of the people I'm around every day, and most people who live in our beloved city. Every year it surprises me how hard and painful the day is, because honestly it's not something I want to remember. I've discussed this with many people who experienced Katrina, a friend who watched the planes hit the towers on 9/11, and dozens who have experienced devastating loss or trauma--it's almost tortuous to try to be mindful and present on the anniversary of something like that. For me, in the beginning I felt this obligation to commemorate the day that destroyed the lives and homes of the people who live in this city I love so much it hurts. This went completely against any innate response, which was to block it out because my feeble human mind could not dwell on the literal fact or mental image of the city that I lived in was under water one, and two, and three, and now twelve years ago.

This year on August 29th, I was laying in a hospital bed battling sepsis, in one of the hospitals where 12 years earlier people experienced both hell and high water. I had been in the hospital for four days at this point, and had been sick for almost a month, so every right to feel depressed, but around mid-day I felt this overwhelming blanket of depression wash over me. I couldn't watch the news or any of the coverage on Harvey, or even get on social media as people were posting pictures and comparing the two storms. Yes, I was overwhelmed of the possibility of two more days in the hospital, not having seen the girls or fresh air for days, but somehow my mind blocked out that August 29th pain until it didn't and then it hit me, like it does every year on this day. And because I had no choice but to lay there, instead of checking out, and began to process.

My heart had been heavy already--actually let's call a spade a spade, I've been depressed for several reasons--for personal health issues I've been struggling with all summer (hence being the hospital fighting sepsis which I'll share more about later), the death of my beloved grandmother who died while I was on a plane to go say goodbye, one very close friend whose dad has cancer, another whose is in the ICU after an aneurysm, on top of the evil in Charlottesville and now the catastrophic devastation of Harvey.

It is human nature and completely reasonable to question the existence of a good God when tragedy and devastation strikes personally or globally, but what I'm learning are two things--that sometimes the "good" or the "miracle" that comes out of our circumstances are the circumstances themselves and sometimes that good is how we are refined as a person, how our story will allow us to go forward in life and allow others to taste the salt of grace as we live out the hard things. Secondly, I don't want and can't handle the alternative--to give up hope and to give up believing that God is working all things together for our good. That He is making all things new and redeeming the bad day after day and allowing us to experience it in our own lives and to be a part of it by meeting others in their darkest hours.

I am certainly not saying that we should skip over the part where we are angry, mad, devastated, and suffocating with pain. Those things NEED to happen, people need to be able to identify and work through emotions and it needs to be okay for them to acknowledge that things are horrible. I'm saying that there is a choice to make, and it's not the choice to be happy or the choice to be positive, saying those things can sound trite and often feel and are impossible. It's the choice to LOOK. To look for the hope, to look for the good. I came across this Ann Voskamp quote last night and couldn't have articulated it better:

| Even when the waters rise and the rain still falls and it seems there is no Hope, He who is Hope Himself is with you there in the storm. LOOK FOR THE HOPE. And you'll expand the hope. Believe that change is possible. Believe that grace works. Don't give up--just give everything up to Him--and trust Him to embody hope.|

The reason the looking works, is because we often see what we are looking for, and I think that this perspective of looking for beauty, good, hope in situations and people for that matter, can change how we live and love and grow in the midst of hurt and in our every day lives. The title of this post is a line from an Ellie Holcomb song that I love and I was so moved by the visual imagery of those words. The song actually talks about how often in life we have to bury dreams and to go on when it feels like we physically can't, but adds this declaration that even in the devastating and in the hard, we aren't going to give up hope.

If you know me well you probably know these two things--1) Optimism is not my natural bend. When my husband calls me out on my pessimism, I respond and say "it's realism!" Ha! 2) Things that are not absolutes are very hard for me, I like things to be black and white, either or, clear cut and my rationale brain has a reallly hard time when things are both/and. Spoiler alert, choosing to look for the good, and realizing the reality and beauty of joy coexisting with sorrow, healing coexisting with pain, and hope coexisting with devastation is what you would call the secret sauce.

With all that's been piled on this summer, even before my hospital stay, and without really even being able to articulate what I was doing, I tried out this looking thing. I made a conscious choice to try to see the good and see each step, particularly related to my health as a step to healing instead of "one more thing" to get me down. And to my surprise over the past few weeks before a recent surgery I had multiple people in my life say "you're always so positive about everything." Um, excuse me, are we talking about the same person?

Let me interject here and say that I have still grieved deeply this summer. I have been to the emergency room twice, I have had two surgeries. I have mourned and questioned and cried and screamed. Some days I just gave up, checked out, and literally pulled the covers over my head. But through it all I believe that God has given me nuggets of perspective, and has truly embodied hope through people in my life. People going through tragedies who are sharing and shedding light and dear friends who have walked through these dark valleys with me so closely that that it's gotten to the point that they don't ask what I need they just do, and they know exactly what that is.

I want to be a bearer of hope for other people, and to encourage you that if you are sitting in the middle of something dark and horrible that even though we don't share the same pain that we share the same capacity to LOOK. And I will remind you and help you to look, and you can do the same for me. And for those people not in the middle of something dark and horrible, I'll leave one of my favorite quotes "be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

My August 29th this year ended with hope. Unexpectedly, after most of the doctors had left mine came by the room to see me and through some capacity beyond what felt possible, worked out the details for me to go home. As I was being pushed in the wheelchair out of the hospital the doors opened and I felt the warm air on my face. Even sitting in a dark and damp parking garage, I looked over to my left and saw the prettiest blue sky after many days of gray and rain. I'm still looking for that blue sky in so many areas of life right now, and it may not come in the timeframe that I want it to, but I won't bury my hope. And neither should you.

P.S. Some things on my heart about Harvey that I wanted to share:

#1: GIVE: Thank you to the internet and social media there are hundreds of ways you can give. Find a cause or organization that speaks to you and that you feel confident in how they are using the funds. I watched Brene Brown talk about people who needed underwear and bought underwear through this organization's site. Whatever compels you and how much you can offer makes a difference!

#2: REMEMBER THOSE OUTSIDE OF HOUSTON: Yes, the devastation in Houston is catastrophic, but there are also thousands of people in small towns all along that Texas coastline where it made landfall that lost everything. I know people outside of New Orleans in other places in Louisiana and the Mississippi Coast who felt like they were often forgotten because they weren't the big city in the news getting the coverage.

#3: REMEMBERS ALL OF THIS IN ONE MONTH, ONE YEAR, TWELVE YEARS: The physical debris may get cleaned up but the mental and emotional implications of things like this last a lifetime. For that matter if you know someone who has gone through a sickness, loss, or other tragedy, call them now or send them a text or a note. It means more than you know.