Paradox

Hope is hard, she said. And I agreed. Just like love, hope costs us something. Perhaps it costs us control. Or puts us at risk of looking foolish. Or being disappointed. Who can say for sure why we hesitate sometimes to hope.

Unless we’ve hoped before and had our hopes crushed.

A distant melody ran across my mind as I thought about all of this today. It was from an old album Rob and I used to love when we were newly married. “Faith is the confidence of things we hope for, being certain of . . .” I couldn’t remember the rest of the words.

Google to the rescue.

Of course, the lyricists took liberties with the phrasing, but since translators frequently do the same thing, it didn’t matter. Find your favorite translation and take your pick.

·         “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see.”   Or . . .

·         “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen.” Or . . .

·         “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.”

And so on. Hope, then, is a paradox. And my weary brain is too tired to rely on a paradox to help me see in the dark.

You see, I’m in the dark again. I loved and lost . . . again. My beloved dog, Brody, not yet six years old, had to be put down tonight because he was overcome by an illness so mysterious it left four vets shaking their heads. “We’re stumped,” they each said as I wrote out enormous checks in exchange for their confusion. Though I was encouraged to seek out specialists, Brody was fading fast and I couldn’t do it. I knew in my gut he was never going to get better. He knew it, too, and did all he could to make it clear to us that this was his time.

I found my heart crying out the same words I cried out almost one year ago to the day when I lost Rob. “It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way!” But heaven was silent again. The circle of life spins whether we like it or not, I’m told, and we lost when we desperately wanted to win.

The vet came tonight to our home and one by one we each loved on my broken pup and said goodbye. I looked for a sign that Rob was close all afternoon and through the evening until darkness fell and the vet’s truck drove off with Brody’s body. But while I sensed Rob was near, there was no sign. Throughout the whole ordeal, I whispered to him where he lives somewhere on the other side of a thin veil, “Please come get Brody.” And to our Creator who knows every hair that surrenders to a tile floor and every sparrow which falls from the sky, “When Brody passes, please let Rob come get him.”

The grands and I had spent the day talking about how Brody would be with Rob and would be able to jump and run with the joy he always had until he got sick. Jules said, “He’ll probably run right between Chief and Jesus’ legs!” And we laughed at the image, holding it close in the next hours when faith was eclipsed by sorrow and pain once more. “Please come get him, Rob,” I whispered into the wind again.

Alone in my room tonight, I began going through the photos and videos I’ve kept of Brody for the last six years. It was so hard to see his tail down this week. To watch him stumble into walls and get stuck behind table legs. To know he wasn’t eating or drinking and to note the absence of a spark in his half-closed eyes. Even though it was late, I needed to see him healthy again before I turn out the lights on this awful day. I gathered over a hundred photos into a new album I made on my phone. And even though my exhausted phone kept insisting it was about to run out of juice, I kept scrolling and saving. Suddenly, I stopped short. “Oh, my God,” I said out loud, as the tears welled up in my eyes.

There’s a photo of Rob and Brody in the snow that I took in 2019. It’s one of my favorites of the two of them and it’s been my screensaver ever since I took it. I’m always worrying that I’ll accidently replace it with a different picture, so a couple of years ago I decided to find the original and make another copy of it.

But I couldn’t find it.

It was nowhere on my phone. I found the photo taken right before the one I was searching for, but the original of my screen saver was gone. Vanished. I’ve looked over and over again, but it was nowhere to be found. I finally took a screenshot of my screensaver, complete with an intrusive app that I couldn’t remove, just so I’d have some kind of backup.

Tonight, as I scrolled and saved photos of our wonderful, loving pup, the missing photo suddenly was back in place. It’s not the poser/substitute shot with the unwelcome app that I created a couple of years ago. It’s the pristine original photo of Rob smiling in the snow, his hands firmly holding onto the lead of a healthy, happy Brody.

And I knew.

Rob knew the significance of that long-missing photo. And when I saw it reappear on my phone, tonight, after I’d spent the day asking Rob to come for our dog, I knew that’s exactly what he did. I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me. They're together again and Brody is fine once more. I’ve learned by now, after over a year missing my husband, that from heaven our loved ones know what we’re going through. They pray for us. They send us signs that they’re alive and aware. And they’re the first ones to welcome emancipated souls when they arrive.

Including beloved pets like our Brody.

I sent an immediate email to a friend who had assured me Rob would send me a sign today. Then I glanced at the other two windows still open on my laptop from my earlier google search. “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for . . .” one of them read, while the other echoed its words.

“And this hope will not lead to disappointment,” the New Living Translation reads in Romans 5:5. “For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”

He cares. He even cares about happy white dogs and broken hearts left behind. He cares enough to send a photo of my two beloveds together again, an answer to my prayers, so I can sleep in peace tonight.

Maybe faith isn’t just a paradox. And maybe hope is worth another try.