Hope Revealed

I have been thinking about Hope. The real meaning of the concept, for me anyway, is easily missed. The word is too easy to say as a throwaway thought: “I hope it rains today. I hope you have a good time.” But in a greater sense, it requires a pause, and a careful new thought to appreciate its strength--and its weakness. I have lived with “hope” in my vernacular for 48 years now, and I think I really only understood its subtlety a few weeks ago.

I have been talking with a trained therapist about pain. Since the bowel obstruction occurred in late October, pain has been constantly with me. I don’t know why this is the case, because it was supposed to go away after my surgery. But it pulls on my abdomen all night. It nags after meals, and if I haven’t eaten and my stomach is empty, it sends sharp messages to let me know I need to put food into the process. And the damn tube is aching as well, more later in the day after sitting for awhile. These days, pain is hardly ever not with me in some form. It’s so tiring.

So I have been talking with someone trained in how to manage it. Her specialty is post-traumatic stress disorder. She sits across from me in a classic therapist’s office with comfortable couches and Kleenex, and asks me to describe the pain in a single word. “Weakness” comes to mind among five or so other words. We decide “weakness” is the word that most describes where my thoughts go when the pain takes a mental front seat.

She then asks me to dwell on that feeling and its effects on me. She tells me, "Hold them for ten seconds in my thoughts, and then let my mind go, noticing the words and images that come." I am not yet sure where this is going, but I comply. My mind tumbles forward, building on the word “weakness.”

After two or three minutes, she breaks me out of the thoughts. We talk about them for a short time. And then she asks me to pick up where those thoughts ended and let my mind begin again from there.

It’s surprising that it doesn’t cover ground it has just run across. It leaves it behind and finds new articulations of my situation, each time deeper inside my psyche than the last. And each time looking at the original pain from a different vantage point, showing me how it affects me in ways that I haven’t uncovered until now.

We do this maybe seven times until Hope comes into my mind. I find it buried several minutes beneath “fear.” It is the guarded hope that this pain will one day be behind me, and I will feel physically normal again, able to be present without feeling my body under me. Able to be happy and with my family without first making the conscious choice to do so by ignoring the pain and all it signifies.

And I realize for the first time in my life that without pain, fear, sadness, failure, death…, there is no Hope. The concept of Hope depends on undesirable outcomes for its very existence. Without the very real possibility that I will never be whole again, the hope for a revitalized life is not necessary. 

It hardly ever crosses our minds when we are healthy to hope that we stay that way. We may pray for it. We may be thankful for it. But we don’t hope for it.

Somehow this realization that Hope depends on imperfection and uncertainty helps me appreciate what it means to have it at all. Because it’s uncertain, I appreciate its presence with me and my family. I can grasp its importance as a buoy for my drowning thoughts.

There is good news on this front. I have recently been added to a very unique liver list. It’s not the classic liver list that we are all familiar with in theory. That list is called the “in-criteria liver list.” An “in-criteria” liver is one that comes from a healthy individual, under sixty, without a jail record or history of drug use, etc. These livers are jokingly called “prom-king livers” because it immediately conjures the concept of a young kid, drinking and driving on prom night who unwittingly saves someone’s life through the loss of their own. It’s a tragic moniker, but now that we know it we will never forget it.

I am on the “out-of-criteria liver list” because my cancer was slightly too large when they found it. These are the livers from the people that Jesus hung out with. They are the drug abuser livers, the chronically-ill person livers, the jail-bird livers. They may also be livers from an older person, or a person who has too much fat. These are commonly called the “ex-convict livers.” I am honored to be the potential recipient of their gift of life.  

Classic liver recipients are not generally healthy enough to receive these livers, and a liver transplant using one of these livers might not be successful with someone who has cirrhosis and is close to death. But I, I am a great candidate for these ex-convict livers. My body, ironically, is healthy enough to receive one of these livers and live through it. I can tolerate the time it takes for the liver to adjust to a healthy person’s body.

The good news here is that the out-of-criteria list is relatively short: I am already number two on the list with my blood type and body size. They’re also only allocated on a hospital-by-hospital basis instead of a nation-wide, government-regulated regional list. The Methodist Hospital in Houston is one of the only hospitals in the South to transplant convict livers, so they get all of them in the area; Fat Southern Ex-Convicts Give Good Liver!

More good news is that my  doctor, Dr. Ghobrial, is very experienced with ex-convict livers, having used them for decades now. And even better, he has a good record of success with them.

And the final piece of good news is that he and his physician’s assistant, Dawn, are deeply kind people who want me to live. They want to save me. In fact, they have—gasp—proactively reached out to me with emails telling me they are praying for me and rooting for me this Holiday Season. They want me to live. I am glad to have them on Team Wade.

But because I understand I may not get a liver, or may not get one in time, I can also appreciate what it means to hope for one.

To hope for one means to hope to remain present on the sidelines or in the stands, to remain cheerfully in the snow where a sled track runs down a hill to a kick-ass jump, to remain quietly on a walk through a forest with my kids looking for critter trails, in the auditorium for a dance recital, or at a special dinner with my wife. It means getting to be a dad and a husband. It means walking through an autumn field, sitting with friends, petting my dog, driving my jeep…. In short it means living, and enjoying it for a few more years if not decades—and without pain. 

Hope is the longing and determination to achieve a triumphant survey over past obstacles and struggles. Like a hike up a long, steep and rocky mountain trail, hope is the vision of standing at the summit, looking out over the checkered valley below as clouds cascade upward one on top of the other against cliffs that fall thousands of feet beneath me. Being there on that crest is the point of beginning the trail at all—reaching the summit. And for me, my reward is so much richer than a view and sense of accomplishment. It’s a beating heart and an evolving mind.

I live with the pain for now, such as it is. But I know the reward as well. It is a normal life. And I have tasted that before. I know what it’s like to feel good, to throw a ball a long way and watch it spiral into my son's hands, to stay up late talking, to sit through a movie. I know that is what I am hoping to regain. Without the pain of today, hope would remain foreign and intangible; lost because I wouldn’t need it. Without pain, I wouldn’t have these thoughts at all.

From the mud-soaked arms of the fighting soldier, hope is warmth and home.

From the tired legs of the cyclist, hope offers the cold beer and warm burn of accomplishment.

From the red eyes of the post all-nighter, hope holds honor roll and college admission.

From the anxious sender of a secretly passed note, hope may be a girlfriend or boyfriend.

… Without the black, sad version of the above, the lighted Hope doesn’t exist.

This “Wade revelation” may not apply to everyone’s experience with Hope. My wife has lived with an appreciation of Hope for decades. It wakes her up in the morning and keeps her infectious smile in place throughout the day. Thank God. She hopes for the same things I do, but her hope lives without the burden of seeing the potential negatives.

Maybe it’s needless to say, but I am a little jealous. Her version is an upbeat soundtrack that starts with coffee. My version is a bleary-eyed walk across a hard-packed dessert, focusing on water and bootless, stretched out relaxation at the end.

Nevertheless, we hope for the same things.

And I hope Hope makes a difference.