Sometime near the end of my daughter’s battle with glioblastoma, a friend left a gift bag on my porch.  In it was the silver ring with the inscription HOPE.  I was in the midst of doing the hardest thing I hope I ever have to do — give my sweet daughter back to the universe. I was barely making it through a day, and this gift came at a time when I most needed encouragement.  My hope ring may seem like a small thing, but it wasn’t small at all.  The ring continues to remind me to stay on the side of hope despite the situation.  I wear it every day to remind me that through both joy and sadness, life goes on.

This summer Rich and I went to Eastern Europe with a group of dear friends.  (The giver of my ring was among them.)  Rich is a history buff, and so we had built in a lot of WWII history into this trip.  We visited a synagogue in Budapest, which is a place of worship, a museum, a memorial, and a place where 2,400 Jews were buried.  We went to Dachau, a concentration camp outside of Munich, a place where thousands of Jews and other prisoners perished.  We visited Hitler’s summer retreat, The Eagle’s Nest, a surprisingly beautiful place where nefarious events were likely conceived.  We saw the Shoes on the Danube and learned how Nazi soldiers shot families and pushed their bodies into the Danube River.  We saw the platform in Vienna in which Hitler hyped up his followers.  Essentially, we visited places that represented the very worst of humanity, places that were heart-wrenchingly sad.  And yet….

And yet we also saw war-ravaged buildings that had been repaired.  We saw Pride flags and people holding Free Hugs signs, showing a growing acceptance of all types of people.  We saw beautiful buildings that have lasted for years and whole cities rebuilt after the ugliness of World War II.  Even the cities we visited in Germany where the Holocaust began seemed to be thriving, welcoming, and healing after a terrible past.  Since World War II, Germany has tried to be better.  I can’t speak for the rest of my traveling companions, but for me this trip illuminated HOPE — in my own life, for the United States, and for the world.

We are living in a very difficult time in America’s history.  There is a new atrocity in the news every day.  Our President spews racism and hatred daily.  Our Supreme Court has fallen prey to party politics.  Teachers and schools are being disparaged and our Department of Education is being dismantled.  ICE agents are openly shooting citizens in the streets without prosecution, and we are allowing crazy ideas about health and vaccines to become policy.  We having working poor and kids who are hungry and a slew of other problems. The United States as a country is a mess right now.

And yet…after our travels this summer, I feel more hopeful than I have in a while. I’ve now seen countries who’ve been part of the worst transgressions in the history of humanity, and these countries found a way back.  Holocaust survivors went on to write books and give talks.  Monuments were created as reminders of the misdeeds of WWII.  In Germany, laws have been passed that make displaying the Nazi flag illegal, an effort to prevent these terrible things from happening again.  If rebuilding like this can happen in Europe, maybe it can happen in the  U.S. as well.

My point here is this…I believe that living with a sense of hope is better than being taken under by all that is unfair or wrong in the world.  Hope doesn’t mean that we will necessarily get what we want in our time frame, and hope is not unwavering positivity in the face of difficulty.  Hope is believing that things can improve, trusting that there is a path forward even in the darkest of days, and searching for a light at the end of the tunnel, even if that light is small. And that small light, for me, is enough.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King, Jr.