I walked into the room for the first time not knowing what to expect. Any situation where there is a room full of strangers is not my forte. My mind scrambled and went blank on appropriate small talk topics to cover, and I could feel heat rising to my face as my palms began to sweat. This was not going to go well.
Within the silence of the past two years, I've found myself in many moments where hope seemed lacking. Those moments have varied in their circumstance and in their intensity. Sometimes it's just the realization of a lack of hope in the situation I am in. Other times it's taken the form of existential angst, where the concept of hope on an ontological level is lacking. But regardless of these varied moments, the theme has remained the same. There is little to no hope in this world.
So walking in to my first "Recovery" class felt much the same way. Why should I hope that these women would accept me? Why should I hope that I'll make progress within these walls? Why should I hope that God will speak, or move, or simply show up when God's presence has been so lacking? Why should I hope? It would be better to turn out of the room now, before anyone noticed me, and just leave. This had been a mistake after all.
But for some unknown reason, I stayed. Perhaps it was my people pleasing tendencies. Perhaps it was the fact that I was too paralyzed with anxiety to move out of the room. Or perhaps, just perhaps, I had an inkling of hope after all. Hope that if nothing else, there would be a connection with another human being... and I so ached for connection.
I've been going to the Women's Recovery class for a year now. I've met two women who have become my best friends, found three people that are acting as quasi-mentors, and somehow I've regained a sense that God is in this world and moving. Because if anything, God is in that room and moving. It's the first place in the Church that I've seen people come together and admit that they struggle. Not just with petty, every day sorts of struggles. But addiction, clinical depression, abandonment, abuse, mental illness, and any other number of serious struggles that plague daily life for these women.
But it's also a place where I hear of hope. Hope is a woman who says, "I used to struggle so much more with this, but by God's grace, I'm becoming better." That's the kind of hope I can cling to... the kind of hope that says we all struggle in the silence, sometimes intensely so, and understands that we will continue to struggle in varied intensities. But the language of hope keeps moving forward... I keep moving forward... despite the struggle, to lean into the promises of God.