Finding Hope

I just finished reading The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb.  It is a book that had long been on my "To Read" shelf on Goodreads, and I was excited to walk past it on the shelf at the library while I was stocking up on vacation reading . . . for my daughter.  (I'm not sure how looking for books in the Young Adult section led to me being in the adult fiction section, but those sorts of things happen to me.  Any time I'm around books.)

It's a long, long book.  Possibly the longest work of fiction I've ever read.  Some of the reviews on Goodreads point to the fact that Lamb touches on five or six plot lines in this book, and he certainly covers everything from the Civil War to Columbine to PTSD to women's prisons to the current war in Afghanistan and Iraq to infidelity to . . . nearly everything else.  At first glance it really is a disjointed conglomeration that makes the reader wonder why we have held on for so long.  And then he says it.  On page 685, Lamb has a character say, "Life is messy, violent, confusing, and hopeful."

And that's it.

That's what all these things have in common.

And that's what they have in common with me reading it right now, finishing it yesterday, the day a group of people accidentally shot down a plane full of innocent passengers.  Passengers who included three infants and a hundred men and women who had dedicated their lives to saving the lives of others through HIV/AIDS research.  And the day Israel sent ground troops into Gaza.  Shortly after a local Christian radio host was arrested and charged with the sexual trafficking of a young boy.

"Life is messy, violent, confusing, and hopeful."

I have two friends whose families endured terrible and violent shooting tragedies over the past several years.  The devastation has been horrible, and it has changed everything about their worlds.  But they have hope.

I also have a friend who died following his battle against PTSD.  He fought willingly in a war against bullies and tyrants, because that's who Zack was.  But he was baptized, and he loved God, and we have hope that he is finally at peace.

For some reason Columbine has always stayed with me.  It has been tucked in my mind since it happened, and I continue to be impacted by it.  Perhaps it was the timing--I was a senior in college, so I was aware and had the time to watch the coverage and read about it.  Perhaps it was the fact that I joined my friends in taking a group of high schoolers to Columbine just one year after the shootings.  Or maybe it was standing in a church there, worshiping with my friends and those high schoolers, just miles from Columbine High School.  We sang "Better Is One Day," there in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains alongside Columbine students who knew and loved the children who died.  And we sang, with all our hearts and voices, "Better is one day in Your courts than thousands elsewhere."  Because even in that mess, that violence, that confusion . . . there was hope.

As I wrote following our break in, I have friends and family members who have lost jobs, been betrayed by friends, been abandoned by spouses who vowed to always stand by them, and have their families continually ravaged by addiction.  And all I have to offer them is this.

Life is messy.

Life is violent.

Life is confusing.

But, at the end of all this, life is hopeful.

Oh, my God.  He will not delay.
My refuge and strength, always.
I will not fear, His promise is true.
My God will come through, always.  Always.

{"Always," Kristian Stanfill}