BY JEAN P. KELLY

WITH CHILDLIKE excitement, a kind woman hosting our family near her home on the shores of Flathead Lake, Montana, beckoned my three girls to the edge of the water. “Look,” she said, pointing to dull, grey rocks lapped by glacial melt water, still frigid in July. They were as confused as I until she said “Do you see wishing stone?,” indicating one ringed with a bright white stripe, continuous and uninterrupted. “That’s a gift from the Missouri River, one that can make your dreams come true.”

She instructed my youngest to trace with her fingers along the narrow calcite band, make a wish, then throw the pebble into the icy waters. My six-year-old was not only skeptical, but also conflicted. Why would she throw away such a special stone? Instead, after making a wish, she secreted both her unspoken hope and the striped stone in the pocket of her shorts. Upon our return to Ohio, it was added to an inventory of lovingly selected shells, driftwood and natural trinkets collected by my outdoor-loving darlings.

I’ve often wondered if my child’s wish that summer day was the same as mine, both before and after that vacation: that the man of the house would turn toward recovery, away from alcoholism and abuse of his family. When that did not happen, a bitter divorce cultivated in me another desperate wish: that by-then traumatized and resentful young adult children would rebuild a loving relationship with me. For years I indulged in childish daydreams where I’d utter the right words, plan and execute the perfect new family tradition, and pour my love, kindness, and forgiveness over them through sheer force of will. Not once did my imagined encounters go according to plan. Eventually my despair was so deep, any belief in the future healing so fractured, I believed hope was my enemy.

“It turns out I was not hoping for too much,
I was settling for too little.”

Not until I discovered my own wishing rock on a foreign shore did I accept that my definition of hope was no more mature than my six-year-old’s that day in Montana. While walking alone on a dark sand beach near Kells, Co. Kerry, Ireland, I spotted one stone with a thick white stripe. Wishing stones can be found near rivers and on beaches anywhere water pressure cracks rocks, allowing the flow to fill a single fracture with mineral magic, either quartz or calcite in colors ranging from grey to white to pink.

Eagerly, I picked it up the Irish pebble, turning it over in my palm. Rather than a continuous, single belt of mineral lapping the stone’s irregular girth, I discovered eight criss-crossing striations with one following the blunt triangular apex until all of lines dovetailed and converged on the reverse. Those many filled fissures disqualified my find as a wishing stone, but I cherish it still as a reminder that a wish and a hope are not the same. It turns out I was not hoping for too much, I was settling for too little. I learned in Scripture and other teachings that hope was not an act of human will, but rather a virtue given by God through Baptism and the sacraments.

Even now I can recall the opening lines of the Act of Hope prayer recited alongside sixth-grade classmates before we were dismissed for lunch. “O My God, relying on Thy infinite goodness and promises, I hope to obtain … the help of Thy grace and life everlasting.” Back then, I’m pretty sure I prayed to obtain an A on the next math test or school steaks in the cafeteria.

The Catholic Catechism defines hope as “that by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” The goal of virtually every letter from St. Paul to the early Christians was to give them hope. And to Paul, hope was a real person: Christ. Paul made it clear to the Romans that because human imagination is limited, a necessary condition of authentic hope is a radical trust in God. “Hope that sees for itself is not hope,” he wrote.” (Romans 8:24).

Eventually I replaced my own will–fantasy wishes and desperate hope—with the resolution to be a minister of virtuous hope to my children and others. I shared God’s love accepting my daughters where they were, not wishing they’d arrive where I wanted them to be. On this rock-solid foundation we could build an even stronger relationship.

As Sr. Barbara Jean LaRochester, OCD, writes in her essay, “Hope in an Anchor of Crisis,” “When I bring radical trust in God into these dysfunctional and destructive human relationships, I will change others and others will change as well….When we plant seeds of love, we also plant hope.”