The Sweatshirt

Awhile ago, I bought a sweatshirt.

The sweatshirt is white with nice pinkish writing on the front. The font is pretty and I bought it from a business I believe in. My sweatshirt isn’t too heavy and it doesn’t have a hood (having a hood would make it a “hoodie”, that ubiquitous chilly day accessory from middle school that never competed with crewnecks because those were FORBIDDEN. Just a little cultural context for those of you who weren’t around in the early 2000s). I’m pretty sure that when I bought it, the description included something about it being a “summer” sweatshirt, a concept I’m still not quite familiar with. Anyway, I love this sweatshirt because it’s comfortable, easy to throw on, and it has a message that I struggle to believe: “Get your hopes up”.

This might not come as a surprise, if you know me or if you are perceptive enough to decipher something of my personality from my writing so far. No, I’m not an optimist. My boss is. Good Lord, to a fault. I am a pessimist- the worst case scenario is always what I expect. It’s what I lay awake at night dreaming about and planning against and just fretting over. When I think about my life, the traumas, abuses, pains, and sufferings are at the forefront. Maybe I have a mental illness. Maybe it’s the enemy trying to slow me down. Maybe it’s both. Either way, I’m a glass-half-empty kind of gal, for better or for worse. So, I bought the sweatshirt to, you know, balance myself a bit.

When I first started wearing it, I got a variety of responses: “I love your sweatshirt”, “What does your sweatshirt mean?” “Why are you wearing that?” “Get your hopes up? Hahahaha!” “Get your hopes up, yeah.” You may be thinking some of these things yourself depending on your context and your experience with me. But the one response that I really wanted, I never got: “tell me why YOU bought that and why you’re wearing it”.

So, since you’re on the other side of your computer screen and I think you’re pretty charitable folks, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what you’re dying to know: why did the pessimistic, worse-case-scenario, terrified lady by a sweatshirt about hope?

First, hope is my middle name. Legally. Literally. Look it up. So, I feel like I have an inherent right to buy and wear things about hope.

Second, I wanted to support a business I really believe in.

Third, and most importantly, while I am predictably a pessimist, I do possess a large measure of  hope. You see, I’m not interested in hoping in maybes and might bes. I’m not interested in trying to find the silver lining in a desperate situation. Spinning everything into a positive light kills my soul. No, I don’t possess unfounded hope. 

But what if there were something sure, unshakeable, and steady that I could hope in? What if a good outcome was guaranteed? Well, friends, that’s the kind of thing I’d hope in. That’s the kind of thing I’d stake my life on. That’s what I’d believe.

I believe that there’s hope at the heart of the world. I believe that there’s a God who loves us and who is committed to our good. I believe that he loved me when I was unlovable and he loves you wherever you find yourself right now. I believe that he’s going to make all the wrongs right and make “everything sad come untrue”. (If you know where this quote is from, let’s talk.) 

So, I bought the sweatshirt to speak the truth at the heart of the world to the doubt at the heart of me. I bought the sweatshirt to remind me that, no matter how dark the night, no matter how bleak the outlook, no matter how much pain I’m in, I can get my hopes up. I can have hope in the one who never changes. Hope in something unshakable and certain? That’s the kind of hope I can get behind.

But, you want to know something? As soon as I started wearing that sweatshirt, it got stains on it. To be precise, I got stains on it. All over it. Oil stains from cooking. Coffee stains (no surprise there). Spaghetti sauce stains. Stains from doing the dishes. Chocolate, mustard, my daughter’s paint, you name it. I got stains all over my hopeful, message-to-my-own-soul sweatshirt. 

The person least surprised by this development is my sister. She’s older than me and loved buying me cute clothes when I was a kid. Cute, adorable, little girl clothes that I would promptly soil with literal soil, food, glue, paint, and anything else that I was into that day. I’ve never been able to keep nice clothes nice. It’s just who I am.

And, being who I am, I make a mess not only of my clothing, but my life.The stains on my sweatshirt help me see the irony in my own attempts to speak truth to my soul. I get all excited when I discover or get to share the truth. I want everyone to get in on the action and discover the great treasure I’ve unearthed. I want to live it, believe it, and change my life with it. And I do try, but something always goes awry. There’s always a coffee spill or a child running through my house with a paintbrush or a college student who doesn’t know how to write a check or clean a stovetop. There’s always a mess in my life, literal or figurative.

Like I said, I’m a pessimist. It’s hard to believe that things are hopeful or good or bright in any way. When something goes right, something else goes wrong. When a problem is solved, another one arises. And of course, as soon as I start believing the hope at the heart of the world, I get stains all over it.

Or someone else does.

Consider your most recently stained garment. How did it get that way? Who was responsible? What were the circumstances? Was it really 100% your fault? I’d wager it was a combination of your own ineptitude to keep things clean (or maybe that’s just me?) and a world full of chaos that you have no control over. Unless you’re going to seal yourself inside some sort of stainless steel bubble and rely on Alexa to get everything right, then you’re going to have to deal with people. And, I’m about to blow your mind, people are messy. Me. You. All of us. We’re hopeless when it comes to a white sweatshirt and spaghetti sauce.

Many of you are going to say, “Emily, of course people are messy. We all know that”. But do you? I know many that say they believe that people are messy and that we have an obligation to meet people in their messiness with the truth. But really, there’s only certain kinds of messes that we’re willing to clean up. We are like that parent who can do poop, blood, snot, but dear Lord Jesus NOT vomit (it can’t just be me right?!). Or maybe we are like the parent who would do snot, but nothing else? The latter fits us better- some messes, the innocuous, easy to deal with and “correct” kind of messes are acceptable. “But, for the love of simplicity, don’t bring your blood-stained garments in here. Can’t you see that we’ve worked really hard to make a nice, hopeful, and welcoming community? Don’t you know that if you make that kind of mess in here that it will really mess things up? We’re not equipped to deal with it- it’s your problem. Yes, of course, we’re not the problem- you are.”

I hope you can see the irony in these statements. I see it immediately, as you can probably imagine being prone to staining my clothes and my life as I am. And it hurts. Deeply. We want to be a part of a community. We want to invest in people, but we’re messy. It hurts to be cast out like a soiled garment, no matter how hard you try to keep your life mess-free.

Here’s the thing. I really, truly believe that we can’t have hope without stains on our sweatshirt. We can’t have hope without looking at the messes in our lives dead on and saying, “I’m not giving up on you. You’re annoying, inconvenient, difficult, and whiny, but I’m not giving up on you”. We can’t have the hope at the heart of the world unless we’re willing to hold onto that hope when our glass is half empty. When we get the devastating phone call. When they betray us, again. When she just won’t listen and you watch her destroy herself. When a stray bullet rips through his body. When the chaos closes in and our white sweatshirt turns brown, gray, black.

But, want to know something absolutely ridiculous? The hope at the heart of the world is not troubled by these stains. He’s not troubled by pessimism either. He’s not bothered by my terror at the thought of raising my child and he doesn’t bat an eye at the ways, everyday, that I give up on hope altogether. I can give up on hope because this hope won’t ever give up on me. 

When I lose hope and lose heart, the hope at the heart of the world reminds me about my sweatshirt. He reminds me that he is hopeful when I am not. He is faithful when I am not. He is stainless when I am covered in the soil and chaos of my life. And he loves me still. He loves me more than I could ever ask or imagine. He loves me into hope. 

I wear my stained sweatshirt in public, all the time, in fact. I hope that by wearing my messed up clothing and just being me that someone will get the message or at least be curious enough to ask. Real hope is messy. It’s found at the end of stains and pains and failures. It’s found when all is lost. 

Sometimes, it’s found in a sweatshirt.