Hope Dealer

L E T T E R F R O M T H E E D I T O R

HOPE DEALER

by Javier Mendoza

"We're all born to broken people on their most honest day of living And since that first breath we'll need grace that we've never given I am the barely living son of a woman and man who barely made it But we're making it taped together on borrowed crutches and new starts ... my hopes are weapons that I’m still learning how to use right

"Wooden Heart" by Listener

I’m writing in the wake of some terrible tragedies that our country has faced recently. The mass shooting in Buffalo, NY that claimed the lives of 10 and the school shooting in Uvalde, TX at Robb Elementary in which 19 students and 2 educators were killed. These are among 30 similar shootings already this year and amidst bouts of rising crime, inflation, and wars in Ukraine, Mali, and many other places around the world. Violence, famine, war, personal loss and much more is crashing against us all and many have reached or are reaching a breaking point.

Open your news app even for a few minutes and you are bombarded by tragedy and hurt. Many of us have experienced pain and suffering of our own. We are being affected by these external circumstances and it is affecting us internally. We are dealing with record levels of anxiety, depression, and mental health issues. In the United States, anxiety is the most common mental illness, affecting more than 40 million adults each year. Data from the National Institute of Mental Health has indicated that about 30% of Americans experience clinical anxiety at some point in their lives.

If your chest is tightening up and your breathing has increased you are not alone. You are not broken. You are stressed. You are anxious. You may even find yourself depressed. You have to be able to label what you are experiencing in order to work through it and overcome it.

When you need hope it can feel overwhelming and suffocating and you are tempted to withdraw and isolate. Healing from these stressors is not possible in solitude.

Healing happens in community and you need to know that no matter where you fall on this spectrum of stress or anxiousness you are not alone. You have someone who wants the best for you and your family. You have someone who cares deeply about your health and wellbeing.

Hope is not the absence of fear, anxiety, or stress, Hope exists because of these things. Hope allows us to see the future for what it can be, it is the substance between the facts of what are now and the future we can’t fully see yet but know is out there. When you have hope you begin to speak differently because you know that words matter. Words form who we are and have the power of life or destruction.

I want to tell you that you are on my mind and in my heart this month. I care about you and your family and I care about those under our leadership whether at school or work and we want the best for them.

We should also want the best for ourselves because that in turn allows us to be the best for others as well.

Don’t allow yourself to close up or shut down. Reach out when you feel heavy, recognize stress and be proactive to work through it. Send a message to a friend, write down your thoughts, call someone who has ‘been there’. You deserve wholeness and health, and remember that the goal is not to be perfect, but to be better. Better than you were the day or hour before. Don’t hide from hope, it can be one of the best tools you have to fight the wars, violence and stress that is affecting the world right now. The world needs you and the world needs hope. Be a Hope dealer in a world that is in short supply.