I found hope

Two years ago in January I got a package from North Carolina. Inside there was hope.

For quite a while I was too afraid to wear this beautiful necklace, not to mention that my neck was (still is) too thick to wear the original chain. I kept it in my scriptures, trying to draw strength from it. It was a difficult time, grieving my mom, and being about ten days away from starting a new job that I wasn’t sure was really for me (thank you, F.Z. and the others for helping me learn new things!) and I was struggling with depression and anxiety. I had anything but hope. Every day my goal was to just get through the day, and then try to fall asleep, and just wait for the morning to come. It was a vicious circle. I had so much fear and so little hope, and I was just so lonely in the middle of the second COVID lock down. I was isolated from my church friends, and I had little to no contact with my former colleagues. But in that package there was hope.

As spring rolled around, I bought a new chain and started to wear my cute little pendant every day. Later on I added another reminder to it to be still. This necklace and three simple silver rings were the jewelry I usually wore, all being reminders that helped me redirect myself in times of high anxiety or hopelessness. Going to the Temple without my necklace gave me a minor panic attack, because it was the aid I could literally hang onto to remind myself what, or rather who the real source of my hope was. A painting by Kate Lee, also included in that package, showed it perfectly.

When in a Come, Follow Me session someone asked who Christ was, I wrote down my answer: the source of all my hope. He knows me, He knows my struggles, and He can give me a way to live without these one day. I know that, and I understand that, but being a very imperfect human being, I need a reminder for this. So when last week I realized that my necklace was not on me I panicked a little. How can I survive without hope 🤍? Well, as I was trying to calm down, I found my rings that had been missing for months, and then a delivery happened with a brand new ring… and then I asked the receptionist if anyone had turned in the remnants of my necklace… and someone did! I found hope!

Hope has been my driving force recently, and while I do have hope and faith in the future and in the gospel, these small tangible reminders can be important, but only as much as they don’t let me lose focus and value them more than what they symbolize for me: The eternal love of a perfect Savior who has experienced everything the human mind can, so we can have eternal life one day.