Joy…Noel…Peace…Believe: the clichés of Christmas. They’re dangling between the boughs of your tree, embossed in bold calligraphy on the Christmas cards, and possibly blinking in your front window like a spiritual Bud-Light bar sign. Words we display in gold sparkle across the fireplace before we re-box them for another 11 months. The implications of these words…the implications are something else.

Hope.

I don’t know about you but I’ve seen an overabundance of hope this year. Joe’s hoping he can make it through another round of chemotherapy, Patricia is hoping this will be the month she will get pregnant after three years of trying, Rollie is hoping his retirement funds will magically reappear, and then there is the long line of people hoping for a good job and a second long line of those looking for any job. There’s so much hope in the air it’s starting to have weight -- like volcanic ash. There’s so much hope going around I’ve started fighting back with lemon scented Lysol, like it’s the H.O.P.E.1 virus. Yeah, if you can’t tell, I’ve got issues with hope. 

When Hope Becomes Disempowering

My sweet godchild has spent the good majority of his life secretly hoping his father will acknowledge him. I can read the hope in his very irises, “I’m no longer abandoned! Dad finally noticed what an extraordinary man I am.” It’s been his running prayer, day in and day out for 17 years now. The more the father slips away into his self-involved life the harder my godson hopes, until it has literally begun to consume his life. I want to grab his shoulders and shake him, tell him to LET IT GO, tell him all the hope in the world will not set a love into his father’s heart. This hope, for something that may never be, is eating this boy to bits.

When is it healthier to let go of the hope? Ask Jaycee Dugard’s family that question or the Chilean miners or President Obama and I’m sure the answer is never. Hope is easy when it’s a fluffy-frosting-wish on top of a fulfilled life, and it’s appropriate when we have lost all control of a desperate situation and have no alternative action, but I’ve watched “hoping” become a dismal cycle where a person puts out hope only to get more of the exact situation they’re trying to free themselves from. It’s the law of attraction--you draw whatever your thoughts are; so if you are hoping for a cure to cancer, what you will get is a reality which allows you to keep hoping for a cure. The law of attraction would advise to stop “hoping for that job” as you start to think and feel the satisfaction, confidence and joy of performing your ideal work. 

When is it appropriate to forego hope for acceptance; to trust in what is? Could there be a higher purpose for my godson to be without his father? Maybe having his father in his life would lead to a life of addiction, or maybe he would forgo an opportunity to learn that true love is not bound by blood but by dedication and commitment. Maybe he would completely miss having a more meaningful relationship with his step-father, uncles and grandfathers. I believe it’s within our nature to have the audacity to hope, what’s more difficult is to possess the audacity to let hope go. 

Making “TRUST” Your Christmas Cliché

What if 2011 were more about acceptance; Rollie accepted that he has another 5 years of work before he can retire, Patricia stopped “trying” to get pregnant, Joe stopped forcing himself through the chemo he does not want, and my godson let his father walk? What if the unemployed stopped hoping for THE job for the opportunity to discover new work? What would happen if you gave your hopes over to acceptance? What if you faced your greatest fear this next year not with the light of hope but the spear of trust? Why isn’t “trust” a Christmas cliché? Doesn’t it have a place on our mantle, on our Christmas cards, flashing in our front window like that neon Bud-Light bar sign?

Note from the author -- this is part II in THE CHRISTMAS MONOLOGUE SERIES. You can read the entire series at www.femmetales.com