When Choice is not Free

Before Anne died, I was thoroughly engaged in the study of both the theology and psychology of hope.  I am grateful for the personal resources that study provided during her hospitalization, death and the funeral.  As the whirlwind begins to subside, I need to return to that study.  If nothing else I need to get some sense of what "hope" looks like from my new vantage point.

Psychologists of hope identify three elements that increase hope in a person's psychological makeup.  First is the sense that one can be an "agent"--that is, a person who can actually do something to move toward goals.  Second is the actual pathway or pathways to that goal.  Third is the larger framework within which goals might exist.  That seems a little abstract, I imagine, but it's really pretty concrete for me.

My hopes for a future with Anne have been changed profoundly and irrevocably.  Anne will not be part of my future in this life, except as an invisible traveling companion by God's grace.  I have great hopes for Anne in her new life in Christ, resting in our Lord's arms.  But what of my own hopes?  There is no further pathway to the future we had envisioned together.  I can't get there from here.

So I am pointed to a different future, whether I wish for that future or not.  If I am to have any capacity to move into a future of life and health, then I must be willing to see that future and embrace the new pathways into that future.  I can't stomp my feet, hold my breath, pout and force my wishes onto Reality.  What I want to have happen is not what matters at this point.  But I can attend to what's wanting to happen.

What I really want cannot happen, and I can choose to resist any alternative future.  That, however, will only plunge me into chronic grief and daily despair.  That would be a choice, but it doesn't sound like freedom.  It would be a choice to join Anne prematurely in death.  That would be a choice that reduces my agency, my capacity to move into any future at all.  Instead, I can choose to rest in the process of my life as it unfolds by God's grace in Christ.  That means pain at the moment, because something terrible has happened.  I need to experience that pain, let it happen, for as long as it must happen.  That's the only healing choice for someone who has suffered such a loss.

But this also means growth and hope for the future.  It is one of the paradoxes of this experience that relinquishing my own way is the only path to real freedom and lasting hope.  I think of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13--"Love does not insist on its own way..."  That is the best counsel I've heard today.