Hope Always Beats Despair

I can't decide whether despair precedes that sinking feeling in your gut as hope escapes like a rapidly deflating balloon or whether hopelessness leads to despair. Last night we needed milk, cream cheese and to fill up the van with gas. Before leaving home I checked my wallet. There was no American Express card where it was supposed to be so I thought about where I had last seen it. Aha! I had used it to purchase gasoline for the car the night before and I remembered I put it in my shirt pocket instead of my wallet. I went to the hamper and checked the pocket.

It was not in the pocket.

I have worn four dress shirts in the last two days. I checked each of the pockets.  No card. I continued to look in all the obvious places and then the not obvious and even impossible.  When I found myself checking two pairs of shorts that I hadn't even worn I gave in to despair. I had lost the card and it would not be found. Hoping that friendly hands might find the card I gave up and used my VISA card.

While planning the funeral my wife and her sisters were at their childhood home with their mother. They needed to go to the cemetery to select a resting place but no one could find the house keys. They knew they were there because they were in the house. At first they began with retracing steps, double checking likely places and even looking where they were sure the keys were not.  When those basic steps were done the feeling of desperation set in.

They did not have the time to waste. There was still so much to be done but without a resolution on the burial place they could not finalize the funeral plans. With each passing moment the tension and stress increased while hope and control vanished. Ever more frantic they searched on hands and knees every nook and cranny where the keys could possibly be. Everything was where it was supposed to be except for the house keys.

Whether it is a credit card or a set of keys, the loss of simple items turns us into deflated balloons, especially when under pressure. But the simple solutions teach us that we should generally have hope and persevere rather than give in to the weight of despair.

Why?

Upon arriving home from the store and telling my wife that I would need to call American Express and report the card lost, I walked into our music room and there on the floor in the previously unlit room lay my light-blue line of credit.  Suddenly relief.

As for the key, in that moment when all seemed lost, my wife queried aloud to her mother, "Could they be in your bra?"

Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat, there were the keys.

We found more than keys and a card.  We found hope.