What Do I See?

Hope is a fountain!  It bubbles forth and dances about, bringing life and refreshment to all who are gathered near enough to enjoy its presence.  It stands in the middle of life's garden, and the best spot for it to be placed is in the dry, parched ground, surrounded by a flowerbed of dreams that have all withered and nearly died away. 

Not again.  Those words, when spoken, can have a couple different meanings.  There's the emphatic, "I won't let it happen, not again."  There is the frustration, "The baby wrote on the walls." "Not again." And then there's the feeling of despair.  "I won't get my hopes up.  Not again."

Why do we so easily fall into hopelessness?  It's like there is a cloud hanging over the earth sometimes, over individuals as a whole, of hopelessness.  Of course life is full of frustrations and circumstances beyond our control, but why do we have to let them dictate our emotions?  We don't have to, but...we do.

On Tuesday I got a note from Nyssa's teacher asking for a parent teacher conference.  Now she's only been in school for 8 days!  It appears she's still not getting her work done.  We went through this last year and I didn't want to have to go through it again.  I let it get me down.  I see so much potential in my little princess, and she is so smart!  I didn't want her to be crushed by her own doing.  But then I remembered that at least now we have some sort of logical reasoning for it.  It's a small sprinkling of hope.

I had to pick Nathaniel up from school Wednesday because he got sick for the second day in a row, even though he exhibited no ill feeling when he got home Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.  I had to load up the other two at lunchtime and they were fussy and whiny.  I couldn't sleep last night, and I was tired and really didn't feel like listening to them.  In my mind I thought, not again.  Please, please don't fuss!  I knew it would mean going out AGAIN to get something to eat and I am trying desperately to feed them very healthy foods.

Not again.  Here we go again.  Why is this happening?  All of these phrases are very dangerous when we allow them to remain.  When I let a thought mill around in my mind, it grows, like a weed that takes over the yard and consumes all the good nutrients.

The other day, my daughter picked all the little marigolds that were in our garden.  She must have brought me twenty marigold heads, and she was so proud of herself.  Outwardly I smiled, knowing she picked them with love, but inside I confess I did cringe a bit.  I couldn't even put them in a vase of water.  But I stopped my selfish thinking.  She had given them to me from her deepest heart and there was no way I was going to rain on her parade.

So I reached down and made myself think of her, not of myself, not of my garden, and not of my flowers.  I remembered something I had read in Better Homes and Gardens back in the days I had time to actually read it.  She was so proud when I took one of my wedding gifts, a crystal bowl, and filled it with water.  Then, I placed all those beautiful yellow orange marigold flower heads inside.  It was a beautiful array that filled the entire bowl.  And when you looked at it from the side, it gave an illustrious kaleidoscope effect because of the cut of the crystal.  It was there..the beauty of hope.  These precious flowers had been stripped of their life source, but they seemed to dance happily along in the waters of hope. 

Sometimes all that surrounds us goes barren.  The ground is dry.  Every circumstance shows a desert wasteland under the burning sun.  We feel ourselves shriveling up like there is nothing left.  We harden ourselves and become too weak to even try to open our faces toward the sun because it seems to only bring us pain.  But something is always there..

Deep inside there is a reservoir that we don't know is there, and we can access it.  Someone turns open a valve and we feel it.  Life's saving grace!  Something changes, slowly at first, maybe even undetectable, but a trickle begins.  And even if we don't have the strength to turn our face towards it, it still touches us.  And we feel that glimmer of hope.  We drink it all in and we find ourselves refreshed!  There lies a secret waterfall of grace that begins to pour over us and wash away all the hopelessness and leave a sense of determination to stand. 

And we reach out and realize we're not alone.  There is a desert around us but we have been filled, and have been given the strength to reach out to the next flower.  We begin to see those around us in a different light, and we let the hope flow from our own lives into that of another, and another, and another..and then we begin to see it, the garden of hope.