In nearly every Domestic Violence Coalition and Children’s Advocacy Center I visit, I ask the person I talk with at the end of my interview about 1 or 2 stories of hope that they have seen while working with people in need. The look on their faces change immediately as they go from talking about stories and statistics that are a challenge to deal with, to a story or two of hope that their agency has brought to someone’s life.
Just 2 days ago, Bud Scharfetter of the Chillicothe Coalition Against Domestic Violence told me of one of his stories of hope. A woman who had so many things going wrong in her life, drug addiction, domestic violence, alcohol abuse and was at the end of her rope as she was about to lose her children to social services. Bud stepped in to get her life turned around, including her being able to keep her children. Today she is in a better place than she has ever been in her life. This is one of the many of Bud’s success stories. It is a story of hope, of good hope.
Today I rode a much longer ride than planned. I rode 88 miles for these stories of hope. There is hope for everyone’s life, you just have to want it more than not. At the half-way turn around of today’s ride, the path ended so I decided to ride up an empty country road for a couple of miles. When I turned around to head back, I noticed the road sign where I posed my bike in today’s blog. Amazing coincidence!!
My longest ride of my life was the ride today. It was very rainy and wet during most of the ride, what was Bogart doing back in Cleveland? He is one lucky dog!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 2nd, 2011 at 8:29 am and is filed under Kindness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.