Redefinition

I am writing this post especially for Franchesca's Small Miracles blog hop at Small Bird Studios. I recently posted about chasing hope but that post didn't seem to fit with the theme of choosing hope. So, back to the drawing board I go and I will start with the basics this time.

The noun "Hope" is defined in Webster's as "desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment". For eight years my definition of hope has been something a little different. Anyone who has read any of my many postings on this topic probably has an inkling how I define hope though I've never spelled it out. Hope for me is found in new life, specifically life that I have created. When Wyatt died my hopes died too. This may sound conceited, but stick with me. Until the moment he died I had achieved everything I had intended to in life. I had a husband perfectly suited to myself and in him I found my best friend. I had worked hard to earn the money I needed to attend college and graduate school with the most minimal of loans. I owned my car and had just begun a career which I chose as a teenager and had persisted to achieve with little support from my family. I had intended to start a family and though I was no stranger to failure I usually found a way to make things work but with Wyatt there was no wiggle room. Probably for the first time ever I accepted the bitter taste of defeat for what it was, loss in the purest sense. I was told there was no reason to believe it would happen again and that we could try for another child but hearing and feeling are two different things. It is so very hard to rid yourself of that bitter taste. I could have named our first daughter hope, because that's precisely what she was. She became my definition of hope. My chance to find good again in what had become a horribly sad world.

She is now seven years old and I realize my definition must change. I have found hope and she has changed me. Hope has reignited my desire for life, for my life, and my need for fulfillment. These things cannot be defined by others - not my husband, not my children. Desire and fulfillment are things that I must strive for myself. I desire to live a good life (one spent balancing service to others and self while being mindful that a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle). My expectation is that a good life will lead to fulfillment. Today, I have changed hope.