Becky is a woman who lives with a sparkle in her eyes and a laugh at the tip of her tongue. I’ve known her since I was twelve and she has always been a light in any darkness, that can fill up a room.
“I feel that hope is to view the world with eyeglasses of gratitude.” She said thoughtfully. Becky is the type of woman who already has those eyeglasses of gratitude. She has gone through many trials herself and has seen others go through some as well.
“My husband and I, we had served as ARP (Addiction Recovery Program) missionaries for a couple of years, and there was a lady at one of the meetings and she said, ‘I had it all. I had a house in California on the beach, had a house in the Caribbean. I had a house in Florida, we had a house in Europe.’ She said she had everything money could buy.
“And she said that now, because of her addictions, she had lost it all.”
This woman wasn’t sorrowful for all that she had lost. She had a perspective of hope and gratitude. Becky continued the story.
“Now she has the gospel in her life, and she said, ‘When I had everything, I had nothing. And now that I have nothing, I have everything.’”
Becky sees this woman as inspirational. She continues to say how much gratitude and hope can affect us.
Hope “needs to be continual. Because once we think we’ve hit those moments in our life where things are calm and we haven’t had any big active trials or afflictions and so you can be cruising along and then it’s interesting how when we’re in that cruise mode, if we lose our focus, we lose our focus on what’s most important.” Becky went on to explain.
“We’re blessed when we have these afflictions, so that helps us turn our minds back to what’s most important. But I feel like if we continually live in hope, yes, hard things will come, but because we have God with us, we will be able to be able to handle those things with a lot better ease.”
Moving on from having hope through trials and afflictions, Becky sympathizes with what happens when we lose hope.
“I know a lot about [losing hope] because I struggle with the bipolar two disorder. And so, when I’m in that depressive mode or that despair mode, I mean, it literally feels like Hell’s gonna swallow you up. It’s horrible. You know you don’t want to exist anymore. You don’t want to feel anymore. You just want to just disappear.”
And even though Becky medicates and helps herself she always wants to help others have hope.
“I don’t think anybody wants to lose hope because it’s just awful and horrible. So, we need to help lift those around us with love and kindness.” Becky concludes.
Having hope can be hard sometimes. Watching others lose it can be hard to see. To Becky, God is always going to be there for us and he will always give us blessings. Becky has a saying for blessings that come from heaven. She calls them hugs from heaven.
And I believe that Becky has a lot of them to give.
