A POST FOR PASTOR BOB

“Hope is the YES to life” –Ronna Jevne I would have liked to celebrate my retirement at a glorious sunny garden party on a day of my own choosing. I would have liked to have left for Australia the following day with my healthy husband. Yet I cannot say that I would rather have been more pessimistic about the possibility than I was. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been much good in knowing That the unexpected closure of the Hope Foundation would derail my career in 2012 Or that multiple systems atrophy was already beginning to disable my husband in 2009 Or that I’d be a widow in 2019. Because there was always joy alongside the fear and sadness That haunted me during the period of my life when all the plans I had previously imagined became irrelevant. Some days I get a laugh by telling an audience that my hope presentations are proof that I am unsuccessfully retired. Some Saturday evenings I go to card parties where seven people play—three couples and me. Because sometimes I think that hope is more than the YES to life. It is the YES to possible lives in which some things we want must stand smiling beside other things we never wanted and probably never will.