When Hope Hurts

A reflection on the sting of wanting and waiting, this first week of Advent.

We were stuck, the five of us trying to head north of town while bundled up in my car on a busy Nashville street. The green and red lights above, ironically festive, though meant to redirect the middle lane of rush hour traffic, were barely noticeable amidst the forever river of red brake lights.

Our annual tradition of eating barbecue, freezing our extremities in rooms of colorfully enormous ice sculptures, and wandering through Opryland’s myriad of merry offerings with our best friends — was in jeopardy. That, and the sanity of almost every person in our car. We weren’t “Sorry, just running 15 minutes behind!” late but the “I’m honestly not sure we’ll ever make it. Go on without us” kind.

I thought, half-ironically, how appropriate the length of time we spent sidled up to a cemetery on that road was, since I was probably going to live the rest of my life in that spot. It certainly felt that way as the interior mumbling and grumbling increased and the GPS, which had foolishly rerouted us in the first place, began behaving as though it’d had one too many cups of spiked egg nog at the work Christmas party.

It didn’t matter that we had on the battery-powered, colorful C7 bulbs strapped to my roof rack or that Christmas music was playing in the background. Chris Rice singing about peace on earth in his gentle, stripped down sort of way, turns out, can have the opposite effect on children of certain dispositions. “IT’S MAKING ME MORE STRESSED!” screech-cried from the middle row is now a core seasonal memory.

This week we light one candle each night (or sometimes, the next morning), its flickering casting long shadows on the cluttered dining room table. It’s just enough light to read and occasionally eat by, the wax dripping steady over the edge, leaving its puddle below, mimicking the molten pool I often feel like this time of year. Exhausted and spent, just in time for the liturgical church calendar to turn the page on ordinary time and (supposedly) quietly usher us into the seven days we spend meditating on hope!

My Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary (Second Edition Unabridged) definition(s) of hope.

There is not a human alive who can’t point to one of these definitions and remember at least one, if not millions, of moments of what it means to hope. But do we remember the thread of pain and hurt woven into the journey, especially the ones which take their time?

I can remember the waiting room, five years ago, like it was yesterday. The way my chest felt tight and the stale air choked the life out of everyone around me, thumbing away their worries on phones while I let my blurry vision dance between them, the home improvement show playing on the tv in the corner, and back. The sudden urge, despite my throbbing eye, to pray quietly to myself the words of Psalm 27 for each one of us there where the line between blindness and vision is so delicately drawn and danced. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

I can remember the energy outside the courtroom that same December, our best friends minutes away from making official what their hearts had known for months and had hoped for even longer. The many years of trying, wondering, and believing — even while doubting, had led to this moment. Their labor and expectation all its own, with both pain and purpose their loved ones had borne witness to all along. Family gathered around a little girl who knew she was loved through and through, and inside the courtroom it was nothing but joy — a new name written onto a family tree. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

That same little girl smiled big when she saw us finally barrel through the doors of the barbecue joint. What should have taken forty-five minutes, instead took more than two hours, one whole hour spent moving less than half a mile. Plied with the company of patient and loving friends, french fries, and syrupy soft drinks, the kids’ frustrations slipped off like an itchy, ill-fitting sweater they were only trying on. Slowly, I gave myself permission to do the same.

Was it the nudge I felt, somewhere between the purgatory of Lebanon Pike and the Heaven’s gates of Briley Parkway, that this real-world experience was a valuable lesson in our week’s meditations? The dawning realization in the dark shadows of my car that I didn’t exactly feel but knew deep down and then shared with my family? Was it the beckoning flame of our friend’s willingness to wait with us, knowing the journey was ours to take but they’d be there in the end?

For someone who’s written a novel about what it means to get to the other side of what you long for and finding what you need in the process, you’d think I’d be better prepared for these journeys in life. That I’d buckle and button up, joyously embracing the difficulty between where I am and where I want to be. My husband seems capable of this. I have dear friends good at it, too.

But like a child, I’m always surprised by the sting of wanting and waiting.

Desire finds its roots in the Latin phrase de sidere which means “from the stars.” What we long and wait for, in its essence, is the act of looking to light in the dark. And this, I want to remember: that hope is not a room lit with the hum of lamps and recessed lighting, but one candle pushing back the encroaching darkness. It is not the glaring light of a cloudless, sunny day, but the pinprick shimmer of stars in an unceasingly black sky.

It is not without pain, without suffering, or without the ache of doubt and the whisper of death — of a loved one, a wish, a want, a dream — but it is always, always light.

He might not have been feeling so much peace on earth that evening, but when he drew this during our gathering at the table a few nights later, the gift of our journey came into sharp focus. As they say, art begets art.