There was a time when, to others, everything in my life looked normal, even wonderful. I did have plenty to be grateful for—a husband who loved me and provided well for me and our charming toddler. But I was numbed by depression and a mental darkness I couldn't escape.

An intolerable bitterness that I'd been holding in my heart came to the surface after a bike accident that knocked me unconscious. Afterward, somehow, I got up and continued on my errands, slowly, and walked my bike home, one arm limp and useless. I prayed for healing, which consisted mostly of crying uncontrollable tears.

With the prayer of a Christian Science practitioner, I felt some bones in my arm realigning. The pain stopped, and I used a sling to keep my arm protected. But still I was overwhelmed by the emptiness and disconnection I felt from life and joy.

The odd thing was that every time I prayed, the only solution that would come and break through my tears involved an irresistible urge to do household chores. I prepared food, washed dishes, and did yard work with one arm. I thought it peculiar to find comfort in these chores, because I usually found them to be a burden.

A breakthrough came one day when it was time to do some ironing, a task that  seemed impossible to learn to do with my left hand. Standing at the ironing board, as all those bitter tears came pouring out again, I found myself almost screaming: "God, I hate my life! I can't stand being a mother. I hate doing housework and being responsible for my home."

Even as I blurted out those complaints, I could see how my joy had been undermined for months by a mental darkness. But still, I knew, I had a right to hear something from God deep enough to displace my despair with hope.

"Dear, dear child," I then heard Him speak in my thoughts, "never have I asked you to do one of those things alone. Always I have been helping you."

And I knew this was true—I knew it as tangibly as I had felt comfort in doing housework with one arm for the preceding week. Spontaneously, I picked up the iron with full strength in my right arm. With no pain whatsoever, I finished ironing two weeks' worth of shirts.

The healing of my arm was so thorough that I learned to play tennis later that year. There were a few more battles for the complete healing of my mental state, but I was able to feel comfort and peace in homemaking and motherhood from that moment on.

There's a basic teaching of Jesus that undergirds a consistent hope. Jesus taught that like produces like. He said you can't gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. It was a warning against putting your hopes in the wrong place. Good trees produce good fruits. That's an assurance about our own goodness resulting in useful service, but it's also a statement about God. The best thing about God's goodness is that it results in good for us in our own lives. The impetus for all life is God, and this loving God maintains what He/She creates. Life is secured, exalted, beautified, and blessed by God.

The constancy of hope lies in the fact that it does not depend on the circumstance we're in. Hope comes from the presence of God. I've learned to guard against the dull jadedness that had me going through the motions of life without recognizing the joy of God's presence.

I feel sure that it's finding God in the routine of life that will prepare us to feel the divine power of God when we're in more difficult situations. In the middle of isolation, destitution, the cruelest injustice, are the invisible things of God that are unexplainable to the earthbound mind: the irrepressible inspiration, the irresistible purity, the undefeatable right. Hope gives us peace, provision, and protection. We can honor God's presence by consecrating ourselves to hope . . . and refusing to live without it.