A Girl Named Hopeful

Day after tomorrow, I am to get my third chemo infusion, but if you ever start feeling sorry for yourself, it is a good idea to go to a clinic or hospital or institution or nursing home where you will discover someone in worse shape than yourself. 

Today at the Divinity Wellness Clinic in Sioux Falls today where I went for a blood test and a Vitamin C IV, other patients were in the same room, including a father and daughter from Yankton. It was obvious that the girl was facing severe disabilities, including twisted feet and hands, not being able to talk or communicate in much of any way. Her eyes looked blank most of the time, except when the intravenous needle was pulled out of her arm. At that point, her face puckered, but the rest of the time, she lay with hardly a movement in her special wheel chair during her IV. Although I found a few subjects to discuss in a friendly manner with the nurse and the father, I did not ask any nosy questions in front of the girl.

"Had she been born this way, suffered a disease or an injury?" I wondered inside. 

And then, as the nurse spoke to the girl and called her by name for a second time, I knew I had heard correctly the first time. The girl's name was Hopeful! 

"Hopeful!" I exclaimed. "That is a beautiful name!"

Even in the face of whatever it was that she was facing, I thought, it was a beautiful name. The nurse said the names of the girl's siblings were also beautiful, so I asked what they were, and the father recited them for me, down a list of about six or seven names! 

"Big family!" I commented. "I have seven children, too!" 

Right at that moment, the father was wheeling the girl out of the room, but as she came by me, those same eyes that had seemed so blank, were suddenly large and bright. She was actually looking at me! I had not seen her looking at either the nurse or anyone else. But those eyes were looking at me, eyes that weren't quite coordinated, but one was looking straight at me!

"See you, Hopeful!" I said, touching her arm as she glided by me in her wheel chair. "Have a wonderful day!"

The nurse and father had been talking about therapies being done with the girl, and how she was being worked with to use her eyes to communicate. I don't know what the girl may have been trying to communicate, or if she was at all, but there was something about those eyes that were suddenly luminous as she was wheeled past me. Had she understood what I said, that her name was beautiful? Was she just glad to be leaving that room of IVs? Or was it something the Lord allowed to happen, to speak to my own heart--allowing a girl named Hopeful to look me in the eye, a lady in the middle of a cancer fight, wondering how long I have hope?

Either way, it was special to me, the large, beautiful eyes of a girl  named Hopeful. I learned later from the nurse, when I asked, that the girl had been in an accident a couple years ago, but the therapies that the family is finding for her here are making a difference in her improvement. 

I pray that hope will refresh the hearts of the girl and her family as they continue to work through the struggles and the caregiving. May there always be someone to speak a kind word to lift their spirits. And may we all have a wonderful day because of hope, and the God of hope, and His kindness to all of us in our troubles and heartaches.