“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”

– Lin Yutang

Each morning, when we first open our eyes, we are faced with a choice.  How will we choose to live today?  This morning I have chosen to live in Hope.  There are many people among those I love who face serious challenges this week.  Three are innocent children who are headed for medical treatment at some fine hospitals.  Some are the parents of these children, whose ability to face fear and greet it with courage will offer hope to their little ones.  Some wrestle with difficult decisions and personal demons that make their lives more burden than joy.  There simply are times when we have no solutions to offer and no sense to make of the hardships that suddenly block the road we travel.  These are the opportunities we have to choose Hope — to blaze a new trail in a direction never traveled before.  When enough of us band together and choose this trail, our walking soon makes it a well-traveled road and the Hope we carry with us can erase fear and carry us to the other side of the obstacles.

My granddaughter, Cheyenne, gave me a refresher course in Hope this weekend.  It is a tradition in our area for communities to host Halloween parades.  Bands play, and schools, clubs, and families join together to honor the ancient tradition of wearing disguises on Halloween.  Some costumes are clever and cute; some portray an ideal shared by the group wearing them; some simply are ghoulish and frightening, and the people wearing these sometimes forget how real they are to small children.  As we stood in front of Cheyenne’s house, waiting for the parade to come, I held my tiny girl so she could see over the crowd of bystanders whose knees blocked her view.  A silent man walked by, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.  A hood from a layered sweatshirt rose from his collar and held in place a mask of an eerie jack-o-lantern with glowing yellow eyes.  His appearance was startling, but his silence gave him a creepy air that completed his plan.

Cheyenne pointed to him as he approached us.

“Grandma,” she asked, “is he scary?”

“No,” I answered, “I think he’s funny.”

As he came closer, Cheyenne pointed toward his eerie mask and proclaimed, “You are FUNNY!”

Even when he came so close that his nose almost touched hers, she squealed with delight and laughed at the funny pumpkin head.  It was the decision, in that split-second moment, to let the little girl in the Tinkerbell dress see potential fear as something different, that allowed her the courage to laugh, literally, in the face of something frightening.

That is Hope.  It is the courage that rises above our ability to solve a problem or challenge.  It is the tiny flicker of light in our hearts that dispels our dark fears.  That experience with Cheyenne and the Pumpkin Head man reminded me not to overlook Hope as the week unfolds.  If we can stand by the people whose challenges are difficult and very real —  if they can ask us, “is this scary?” and we can respond by taking their hand and walking toward the obstacle — perhaps, together, we can let the light of hope show us the next step to take as we blaze a new trail to healing.