‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without words and never stops – at all. Emily Dickenson Dear Friends, For the last twelve weeks, Jeff and I have attended a class sponsored by NAMI (The National Alliance of Mental Health). We proudly graduated from the “Family to Family” program last week with nine other classmates. During those three months we have gotten to know each other well. We have listened to each other’s stories. We have laughed together over the absurdities of our situations. We have felt the weight of painful decisions that have had to be made and we have shared our many disappointed dreams. You see, each of us has someone in our family that suffers from mental illness. We watch them struggle daily to hold their lives together. And we likewise struggle as we try to figure out what the next steps for them – and the rest of our families - will be. The first night we gathered we each told our stories. The most painful for me to hear was that of a mother and father who shared that they had no idea of where their twenty-two year old son was; he was homeless and that particular February night was a cold one. The story hit a chord with every person in the room, for we all wonder if the same fate might befall our own child. Week after week we learned about the nature of the illness that has so gripped our loved-one. We learned about diagnoses, about medications, about available services in our county. All of that was so very important. But for me at least, even more important was hearing the first-hand stories – and telling ours, too. It was learning that what we go through is not ours alone; we now have a group of friends who understand exactly what we are going through and speak the same language we speak. Most important of all, is the sense of hope that I came away with each and every week. The feeling that not only will we make it through this dark, seemingly endless night, but that there truly is hope. I found hope in the experiences of these families who have fought valiantly for their mentally ill family members. I found hope in the small successes they shared each week. I found hope in the tenacity of these people who refuse to give up and who will not turn away. Why am I sharing this with you? Well, because you are also my family. Because when we are Christians, we share our sorrows with each other as well as our joys, our sadness as well as our successes. But I also share this with you because statistics tell us that one in four Americans experiences the effect of mental illness – either themselves or one of their family members. And that means you may also be suffering from this terrible illness in your own life. Hope can sometimes seem to be an elusive creature that can easily fly away. Yet as that Irish hymn reminds us, it is the “Lord of all hopefulness” that gives us the courage and the ability to keep going, to believe that God is in all things and situations, even when we cannot make sense of it. For Emily Dickenson was right, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without words and never stops – at all.” Peace, Mother Lisa+