Day #2: WHEN LIFE GETS HARD, LOVE SHOWS UP – When You Need Someone Else to Carry Your Hope

I’ve been walking through a long season of hard, ending with a risky and challenging surgery. I wanted to offer up ways people have been supporting me as ideas, so that we all can collectively do this for one another. I’m calling this the WHEN LIFE GETS HARD, LOVE SHOWS UP. Here’s Day #2.

Tammy wandered into a boutique in Sun Valley, Idaho—one of those magical, mountain days. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular. But there it was: a small, beaded ski purse tucked quietly on a shelf. Ordinary, maybe, in a ski town. But something about it wasn’t ordinary at all. Her heart caught in her chest. Krista is going to ski again, she thought. It wasn’t a question. It was a knowing.

Without hesitation, she took it straight to the register, as if she were carrying more than a purse—like she was carrying a promise.

When she gave it to me, it came wrapped in a box with a perfect bow, like she always does. As I pulled back the ribbon, tears blurred my vision as she told me how she found it. I didn’t just open a gift—I opened something I’d forgotten I needed: the smallest, fiercest flicker of hope.

I had almost let it go. I wanted to ski again—more than anything. It’s one of the ways I feel most alive – on a mountain, outside exercising, carving turns with people I love through the snow. But my body, stubborn and silent, had made no promises. Days folded into years, and nothing changed. The slope that once felt like home now felt unreachable.

There are seasons when hope grows thin. When it doesn’t soar, but limps. When it slips from our hands, not in despair, but in sheer exhaustion. And sometimes, we need others to hold it for us. To believe on our behalf when belief feels impossible.

That little purse sat on my desk like a lantern in the dark. A quiet, steady presence. On surgery day, I tucked it into my hospital bag holding my wedding ring. And it rested in my recovery room—a symbol of friendship, of resilience, of the holy act of carrying each other.

I still don’t know how this story ends. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel skis beneath me like I once did. But I do know this: hope didn’t die – it never does- it just found another way in. And sometimes, it looks like a beaded purse in the hands of someone who loves you enough to believe.

Hope is still here. Still beating. Alive and well.

+Tammy also came to see me off at the airport and gave me a few more sweet gifts. Her friendship has been one of God’s greatest gifts.