The Quiet Strength of Hope

When I think about hope, I don’t think of it as something light or easy. For me, hope has always felt steady, grounded, and sometimes even hard-won. It doesn’t ignore the realities of pain or struggle. Instead, it’s the quiet but very persistent reminder that even when the path ahead is uncertain, it’s still worth taking the next step. I ask you to pause for a moment and think about the last time you struggled with a situation, a decision, or a person.  Maybe it’s a combination of all three.  What motivated you to move forward from the uncertainty, the dread, and perhaps the pain?

As I think about the reality of pain and the steady feeling of hope, I want to take a moment to share a personal story with you.  On September 17, 2021, my cousin Matt, who I grew up with side-by-side, was returning home from a concert in Chicago after seeing one of his favorite bands. It was late, and the train platforms were packed with concertgoers. Matt was just trying to get home, like so many others on the platform that night. Train after train passed, but the crush of the crowd kept people from getting on. As he made one final attempt to board, Matt, unfortunately, fell from the edge of the platform, hit his head on the third rail, was electrocuted, and died instantly.

The next morning, when we got the call, it was a “fall to your knees” moment that changed all of our lives forever. After speaking with eyewitnesses, our family believes that it was a tragic misstep on a crowded platform. I heard every traumatic detail of what happened that night, including the pain of strangers who witnessed it. Since then, we have been learning how to live without Matt, who was more than a cousin, he was a brother and best friend.

It has been four years today since he passed, and I ask myself, what have I learned about hope?

One thing I’ve learned, though it has not come easily, is that hope is active, and it ASKS something of us. In the face of death, that is one of the hardest lessons to live. Hope calls us to trust, to show up, and to keep moving forward, even when everything in us wants to stop. When Matt died, every instinct in my body told me to turn away, to shut down, and just let the grief swallow me. To trust again, to show up again, felt almost impossible. And yet, in those very moments, hope mattered the most. Not because it erased the pain, but because it whispered that the story wasn’t over, that somehow love and life still had a claim on me.

I’ve also come to see that hope isn’t something we are meant to carry alone. So much in our culture pushes us toward “me”—my goals, my struggles, my impact. But during this time of loss, the moments I felt the deepest hope were those when I was reminded of “we.” Walking together with friends and family in grief, the weight was lighter. When we listened and leaned on one another, hope had room to grow.

Still, there were, and still are days when dread feels closer than hope, and it can feel overwhelming. I know how easy it is to slip into despair. But I know Matt would not want any of us to stay stuck there. He believed in God and the promise of eternal life, and I believe it was that faith, that hope, that carried him home. Hope, in its truest form, sets us free.

And it’s not only in personal loss that hope matters. Matt’s death is a reminder that life is fragile and that pain is never far from any of us. But it also showed me how deeply we need hope not only for ourselves, but for the world. We live in uncertain times.  Everywhere we look, people are carrying grief, fear, and wounds that are not easily healed. It can feel overwhelming, like the pain of the world is too much to bear. The temptation is to turn away, to shut down, to let dread paralyze us. And yet, even in the face of so much hurt, hope keeps calling us forward. It doesn’t deny the suffering around us, just as it hasn’t erased my family’s grief, but it refuses to let that suffering be the final word. It reminds me, as Matt’s life did, that compassion and love still have the final word.

For me, living with hope in the face of tragedy means making a choice every single day. Matt’s death reminds me of that. I choose to believe that what I say and do still matters, that my life can carry forward some of the love and light he brought into this world. I choose to respond with kindness instead of bitterness, with connection instead of isolation, with courage instead of fear. Some days that choice comes easily; other days it feels like work. But it is always worth it.

In the end, I’ve come to see that hope doesn’t erase the pain of losing Matt or take away the struggles that come with grief. But it does help me rise, care for others, and find the strength to begin again. And maybe that’s the most important lesson his life and his passing have given me: that hope is what keeps us moving, together, toward something better.