RAISING HOPE

by Sarah Stup
©2009 Sarah Stup. All rights reserved in all media.

Hope is my favorite word.  Hope presses against my autism to let Sarah shine forth.  I use hope for a springboard to leap from places that attract laziness and powerlessness to a height for futures never imagined for a person like me.  Because hope troops along through stop signs, people with disabilities and all people who help them need to raise hope.

C. R. Snyder writes about the importance of hope in the book Cognitive Coping, Families, & Disability by Ann Turnbull, Joan M. Patterson, Shirley K. Behr, Douglas L. Murphy, Janet G. Marquis, and Martha J. Blue-Banning.  Two equal ingredients of hope are the determination to get what we want and the creation of pathways to goals.  People with high hope take new routes whenever a pathway is blocked. 

Achievers get what they want more often by using these two tested ingredients, says Synder.  Since those of us with disabilities have less opportunity, we need to use this hope method to be happy and peaceful.  Pathways can be created where we are wishing to go, not where we are told to go.  People who help us should be pleased we have eyes that forget disability.

Although people with low hope focus on failure, the author suggests ways that hope can be nurtured.  Please practice raising hope for the real people who are inside bodies that work differently.  Remind them of past times when they were successful, and let them know they are worth lots to God.  Reading stories about others who have broken through barriers can be encouraging.  Goals can be reduced into steps that seem possible, and it is important to learn to laugh and keep going after a problem.

People with disabilities can use hope ingredients to gain regular lives.  Because our souls are whole and healthy, we have real hopes and dreams—hope without disability.  These perfect hopes can be our leader out of a world that too often turns away.  Raise hope!

Bibliography

Turnbull, Ann P., Patterson, Joan M., Behr, Shirley K., Murphy, Douglas L., Marquis, Janet G., Blue-Banning, Martha J.  Cognitive Coping,Families, & Disability.  Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1993.

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