Hope

“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

(Romans 15:13)

Hope is a word that we use often, but usually we mean that we are “crossing our fingers” that something will happen, as in: “I hope I'll get a raise this year,” or “I hope that I will make it there on time.” Used in its scriptural sense, though, it has a much deeper meaning—one that is defined in the LDS Guide to the Scriptures as: “The confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness.” In other words, we believe that God will fulfill his promises, and answer our prayers, if we remain faithful to him.  That is the kind of hope that I truly believe in, and the kind that will give us an assurance that the things we righteously desire will be granted.

I maintain hope that I will one day see beloved deceased family members, and I believe that I will.  That's why hope is so closely tied to faith, because in order to have that kind of assurance, we have to believe that God lives, that His word is true, and that he will do what he said he will do.

                 

One experience that taught me well about the importance of having hope was when I was a young mother, with a two-year old and a baby. My husband, Daniel, had graduated from college the year before, and had gotten a job fairly soon afterward.  It was the year 2000, the height of the Dot-Com bubble, and businesses were starting and sometimes ending as quickly as they had begun. We felt pretty confident in this job, though, and after our second child was born, we decided to start building a house.

                 

We were excited at the prospects of having a nice, new place to live, and talked endlessly about the colors, the wiring, and all the things we wanted to customize in our new home.  We frequently drove out to the construction site to see how things were coming along, and told our little 2 year old son about where his room would be, along with the kitchen, and the other parts of the house.  We couldn't wait until our little dream home was finished. 

                 

Then one day, after having been told the month before that the company was strong and growing, it was announced that they were folding.  They hadn't gotten the customer base they were hoping for, and had run out of money.  We couldn't believe this had happened, and were totally blindsided by it.  We quickly called the home builder and told them our situation, and were told that as long as Daniel got a job by the time the house was finished, we would be fine.  We breathed a big sigh of relief, and Daniel started the process of finding a new job.  This was July of 2001.

I had never before realized, however, what a grueling and difficult situation it is to look for a job.  Daniel was constantly scouring the internet for jobs in his field, and would apply to the ones that looked promising.  He got several interviews, but was told each time that they had decided on someone else.  He became more and more discouraged, and so did I.  I thought it would be fairly quick before he would find a job, since he had a cutting-edge skill set as a Web Developer.  Things weren't as easy as we thought they were going to be. 

                 

Then on the morning of September 11, 2001, I got a call from my brother, Jeff, telling me to turn on the TV.  He said something terrible had happened, and I needed to watch the news.  I sat in disbelief as I witnessed the twin towers in New York on fire, and heard the reports that two planes that were taken over by terrorists had flown into the World Trade Center and killed everyone aboard.  Not only that, but people in the buildings were trying to escape the fire and impact of the crash, and not long after I gasped in horror as I saw the towers collapsing.  It was a horrific day, and even for those who watched on a TV far away from the actual event, it was traumatizing. 

                 

We focused on all the news coverage for the next week, but then quickly realized that we only had a short time before our house would be complete and Daniel still hadn't found a job.  He tried to even get an interview, but it was impossible—no one was hiring after Sept. 11^th because of the uncertainty of the economy and our national security. We soon realized that he wasn't going to get a job in time to continue with our home purchase, so we sadly went to the builder's office and signed the papers that gave up our home.  We were devastated.

                 

Finally in a situation where we knew we had to do something different, we discussed our options and prayed about what to do from there.  We received an answer that we were to move to California, and that things would be better job-wise there.  We had a good lead, and thought that Daniel had a job at one point, but it turned out to not happen, and we were back to square one. I called my grandma, who lived in Long Beach, California, and asked if we could come and live with her until Daniel found a job.  She was a little hesitant because she lived in a very small house, but she was so excited to have us come down there to live that she agreed.  So we packed up everything we owned into a big moving van and drove our little family down to Southern California.

                

 Living with a toddler and a baby in a tiny two-bedroom house was a lot more difficult than any of us had anticipated.  I tried my best to make things go well, but my Grandma was having a really difficult time having all these people jammed into her formerly quiet home.  The nice part of having your husband out of a job, however, is that he is more free during the day to spend time with his family, so we spent a lot of time in between job searches going to the park, and the beach, and really enjoyed spending time with our little family.  We knew, though, that if things didn't look up soon we were going to be in dire straits.

                 

During this time, we prayed and prayed that we would be happy no matter what happened, and prayed that Daniel would find the right job.  We had a lot of family that was skeptical of our moving away, and thought we were crazy for just picking up and moving without a sure thing.  But we continued to believe that we had done the right thing, and tried to maintain hope that God would answer our prayers in his own time.

                 

A few days before Christmas 2001, Daniel received a call out of the blue that this company had seen his resume posted online, and was interested in interviewing him.  We tried to be hopeful, but had been disappointed so many times before that we both thought this would probably just lead to another rejection.  Daniel went and talked with the owner of the company and they had a good conversation about their goals, and what they were looking for in a web developer.  Daniel seemed to fit their profile  perfectly, and he came home from the interview feeling more confident than he had in a long time.

                 

We had made plans to drive back to Utah for Christmas, so a few days later we packed our things and made the trek back to where we had come from.  No sooner had we gotten on the I-15 freeway, however, that we realized that every person from Southern California was heading the same direction that we were.  We were literally in bumper-to-bumper traffic that stretched for hours ahead towards Las Vegas, and with two little kids in the car we wondered if we would ever make there with our sanity intact.

                

 Finally, after 10 long hours, we made it to Barstow, California, a popular stop off the 15 freeway. Apparently, everyone had also decided that they would get off in Barstow as well because we could barely move inches at a time through the city.  We finally pulled off at the nearest restaurant we could see, a Denny's, and proceeded inside to get ourselves and the kids some food. While we waited to be seated, Daniel's cell phone rang, and it was the owner of the company that he had interviewed with a few days earlier.  He told him he was in a crowded restaurant and needed to step outside to have a better conversation, so while he did I waited there in the Denny's with my arms around our little boy and baby girl, hoping that there would be good news. A few minutes later, Daniel came back in the restaurant with a big smile on his face and told me that he had just been offered a job, and that he was to start after the holidays in January.  I felt like crying right there in the middle of the Denny's, but I just hugged my husband and congratulated him on finding a job.  It had taken 6 long months, but the thing we had hoped and prayed for had finally happened. 

               

I'd like to say that I was always cheerful and hopeful during this time, but if I'm honest I will admit that I struggled a lot with maintaining hope.  What this experience taught me, however, was that if we look to God in faith, believing that he will answer our prayers, that we can have an assurance inside of us that things will happen according to his plan, in his own time.  Waiting on the Lord isn't easy, but he does grant us the ability to have peace and hope even when things look hopeless, and I believe that the trials we go through help give us the chance to exercise hope in blessings far greater than earthly ones; we learn to hope for things that are not seen, but which are true.

What experiences have you had which have helped you learn to have hope? Why do you feel it is so important to maintain hope in the midst of trials and difficulties?