Just Keep Clapping

Where does hope begin for you?
This week-end it was in a small town on a small campus... a Friday night in America where people came together to look into the sweet eyes of hope.  It was Relay for Life at Bridgewater College, and this is a story about the unequivocal root of hope, which is always love.

Here's my Dad.  When I was a little girl, he was a professor at Bridgewater College.  It was a nurturing place for our family, a place that gave us all gifts that carry us still.  We have always known this small town as home even years later when we all live in other places.  We always find that something we are missing when we return to this valley of green.  And now, years later, our family finds my daughter at home on this campus surrounded by friends and celebrations and years of growing into her own life.  And she calls me and says she wants to honor her PaPa at Relay this year.  So, we make it a secret surprise for my Dad, and invite lots of friends to purchase those endearing luminary bags to both support the good work of the American Cancer Society and to give thanks that Dad overcame Kidney Cancer.  And on a beautiful Friday night, we gather with so many others to celebrate life, this good, hard, wonderful life.

And Dad walks his survivor lap...

on this campus that has harbored so much love for him and in him over these many years.

And we all clap.  We clap and we clap.  We offer Dad and all these other survivors the ovation they so richly deserve.  They have persevered.  They have weathered the storm or are weathering the storm.  We want to say to them... you inspire us, you remind us to love every ounce of love out of this life. Your life yells at us... wake up, be happy, and love, love, love!  Take nothing for granted and be there.  Be there for the people who fill your heart with warmth and joy.

And then there is this moment, where he finds her and she finds him... generations apart, so different in so many ways, but here they find one another on this sacred ground in a holy embrace.  No words can explain.  No need.  Every cell can feel it.

What does he think as he takes this walk?  What does he pray?  What does he hope?  He is a man of humility, of gratitude, of deep passions for knowledge and beauty and compassion.  We pray for him, for those who go before him, for those who follow.

And then the second lap begins, one in which the caregivers join their loved ones.  Do you see?  My mother is now alongside of my Dad.  She greets a friend from our church.  She beams at these young ones who bring honor to both she and her beloved husband.  How can anyone question the power of good or that it exists in these times?  Look at the hands linked together behind my parents.  This is hope.  This is hope.

This is hope walking here, together.

And this is beauty.

And this is laughter.

And this is grace.

We drove back home today in the pouring rain passing green fields and grey mountain ridges.  We know that life is like this, giving and taking, ebbing and flowing.  But we are assured that there is ever hope, that all we really have or need is each other, and that this life is good.  This life is truly good.  I'm still clapping.  Thanks be to God.