When Hope Stops Working the Way It Used To

Reflection

Hope used to feel straightforward. If you showed up. If you stayed. If you offered what you had — a bed, a meal, a place to land — something good would follow.

For a long time, it did.

Pete stayed with me once. I called it K Street Shelter, half seriously, half because it mattered to name it. It began with someone sleeping in the back of a spare car, then a spare bed in a small unit. It wasn’t a solution. It was a door that stayed open.

But life shifted.

I got married. I moved. The unit ended. The spare bed disappeared. Pete left — homeless in Cairns, then homeless again here. When he returned, we were no longer standing on the same ground.

I kept hoping the old ways would still work. Texts. Check-ins. Offers to help. Familiar gestures.

They didn’t.

And that’s when doubt arrived — not about Pete, but about hope itself. What if hope doesn’t disappear, but simply changes shape? What if the thing that once connected us can’t be repeated — only grieved?

I’m learning that some hope must pass through doubt before it can become honest again.

More reflections about hope and doubt

• Walking With a Story
• Hope That Learns to Wait
• Borrowing the Street Back
• When Hope Stops Working the Way It Used To
• The Quiet Weight of Words