by Monica Palmer
All week long, I’ve been seeing red.
I’m not furious or anything; I simply live smack dab in the middle of Cardinals Nation. Red banners are flying from homes and storefronts. Employers are smiling at Cardinals themed dress code violations. Why, even the pumpkins at the grocery store are decorated to celebrate our redbirds making it to the World Series.
This past Wednesday night my husband and son donned their Cards shirts, popped their popcorn, and sat anxiously on the couch in front of the TV to watch Game One. My son’s contagious excitement sucked me in too, and before I knew it, my mind was retrieving an Ozzy Smith backflip from a forgotten treasure chest of childhood memories. Even my daughter, who is not quite two, could sense something special was about to happen, and she climbed up on the couch and snuggled next to her brother to see what all the fuss was about.
Our family room was electrified with excitement and buzzing with hope. That was at the start of the game. As the game went on, however, and the Red Sox continued to score while the Cardinals remained scoreless, the positive energy evaporated from the room. I put the kids to bed, because they lost interest in the game. My husband’s mood had visibly soured, and I could tell he was disappointed. I turned to my smart phone to escape the game, but my Twitter Feed and FaceBook were both plagued by an epidemic of bleakest sorrow prompted by our seemingly inevitable loss. I trudged through the commentary on mistakes made and coaching critiques, and as we entered the ninth inning with a score of 8 to 0, I realized we had collectively lost our hope.
Hope is an incredibly powerful thing, and the loss of hope can be devastating. “Hope” can be defined as “a feeling of expectation and a belief that a desired thing WILL happen.” It’s not a wish or a fantasy, because hope is attainable and within reach. Hope can be fleeting, though, because in the face of strong opposition or obstacles, it becomes harder to believe something is possible.
There are Missourians experiencing hunger right now, and some of them have lost their hope for the future.
There’s a student who has given up hope that she will graduate high school and get into college, because her growling stomach and lack of energy continually steals focus from her studies. There’s a father who was laid off unexpectedly and after striking out time and time again in a tight job market, he’s begun to think that a job with a livable wage allowing him to pay his bills and feed his family is an unrealistic fantasy.
When you give a monetary donation to or volunteer your time at a Food Bank, you aren’t just helping to meet a physical need. You are planting a seed of hope.
That student, who benefits from the backpack program run by the local food bank, realizes there are people who believe in her and are rooting for her to succeed. The father, who feeds his family with food from the food pantry feels renewed and relieved and finds the strength to fill out yet another job application. The seed of hope you helped to plant grows and becomes the powerful motivator that allows people to shake off their losses and move on to a future victory.
Even in the bleakest times, we must continue to plant seeds of hope, because without hope, we have no reason to believe in a brighter future…a future where Missourians have access to sufficient nutritious food and a future with a World Series win on home turf.
Go Cards!