Joy Farrington considers the effects of losing hope

Joy Attmore

'Hope deferred makes the heart sick...' This quote from an old proverb has spent a lot of time whirling around my head over the last few weeks, '...but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.'

Two weeks ago I met a beautiful young woman who had just started to sell herself to help provide for her mum and brother, as well as to enable her to buy addictive substances that had quickly become her hope substitute. She is only 21, the age of one of my dear brothers. I was there when she returned from her first client and asked for a hot chocolate, her voice quiet and her eyes slightly glazed from the spliffs that she had indulged in before coming out to the red light district.

A few days after this first meeting, I went to pick her up from the hostel that she's living in to take her to church with me. The plan had been that her mum would meet us there and we could all go over to the church together. As we waited there and the minutes passed by, it became clear that her mum wasn't going to be able to make it in time. The hope that had been in Vicky's eyes began to disappear as anxiety crept into her movements and every word that she spoke. I took her outside to the car, reassuring her that it was ok, we could try again next week, and stopped to give her a big hug. Her eyes began to fill with tears as she looked at me and I realised, that was it...she had lost her hope. It was this lack of hope that had coaxed her into trying drugs and selling her body. It was a lack of hope that had told her that her dreams were unachievable and instead she should just try and forget. The disappointment had been unrelenting on her heart and it had left her sick and broken.

I looked into her beautiful brown eyes, 'There is hope Vicky. There is a way out of all of this.'

Hope is this vital ingredient that we were designed to constantly hold, causing us to lean into promises of the future and allow dreams to flourish within us. Hope is this deep and beautiful thing that when it is treasured, brings life to us and everyone around us; but when it is dashed by the harsh realities around us it can cause us to shrink back into self-protective prisons.

Vicky's story has been carried in my heart since I met her and a desire has been growing in me to see her life renewed by hope. That desire doesn't stop with her life though. I want to see my own heart and life constantly flourishing in hope. I want to take that hope everywhere that I go and even walk out of my way to do so.

I think I lost my grip on hope a little bit recently. I didn't do it on purpose, it was quite unexpected really, but I found myself having to try and retrieve it rather than actually holding it; like when you're playing catch with someone and you throw the ball a little bit too hard so it goes over their head and they have to chase after it. My ball of dreams flew over my head and I had to run hard to catch up with it. It's taught me to value that ball more though and to be honest, to value those people that I'm playing catch with; to let them know if I can't throw as hard as they can or I need them to throw more gently.

I can't force Vicky to suddenly have hope, but if I'm holding it next to her for long enough I'm hoping that she'll ask to hold it too.