Hope Drippers

“We believe the best is yet to come.

We are givers, not takers. We choose to encourage rather than discourage, to build rather than tear down, and to leave every person we encounter a little more hopeful than when we found them. We don’t pretend life isn’t hard.”

Several months ago in my weekly  post I wrote that we are temperamental biological machines. We are human beings with nervous systems, emotions, exhaustion, and grief. We don’t dishonor pain by pretending it isn’t there. We sit with it. We mourn. We cry. We allow ourselves to feel the full weight of loss because grief is the price we pay for loving deeply.

Last week I shared that our family legacy cabin had burned to the ground. Fire consumed generations of memories, heirlooms, and places that shaped our family. But the fire could not burn our faith, our love, our values, or our commitment to one another. The family legacy cabin is gone. The family legacy is not.

Those two ideas are not in conflict with being Hope Drippers. In fact, they are what make hope authentic.

Hope is not pretending everything is okay. Hope is not toxic positivity. Hope is not refusing to acknowledge heartbreak. Hope is what comes after we’ve honored the pain. Hope is the decision that although something precious has been lost, something meaningful can still be built.

This week my sons, Tim and Nathan, were finally able to return to the property under escort to begin the heartbreaking process of seeing what, if anything, could be salvaged. As expected, there was very little left.

Among the rubble they found our family crest and a broken piece of my mother’s pottery.

When the family recieved this news joyful fireworks and celebration emojis blanketed our phones.

They were burned, blackened, scarred, and forever changed by the fire. Yet somehow they had survived.

As I looked at the photograph, I realized that in many ways it now represents our family better than it ever did before. We will restore it, not by erasing the scars, but by honoring them. One day it may very well carry another chapter in our family’s history: Survived the Great Fire of 2026.

Isn’t that true of all of us? Life leaves scars. It leaves disappointments, betrayals, illnesses, failures, and losses we never would have chosen. We cannot always control what happens to us, but we always have a choice about what we drip into the people around us. We can drip fear or faith, bitterness or gratitude, cynicism or hope.

Our family has chosen hope. Not because life has been easy, and certainly not because the pain isn’t real. We’ve cried. We’ve grieved. We’ve mourned what was lost. But we refuse to let tragedy become the author of our story. We believe God is still writing it, and we believe the best chapters are yet to come.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that every one of us is dripping something into the lives of the people around us. Day after day, conversation after conversation, our attitudes quietly shape the emotional climate of our homes, our workplaces, our friendships, and our communities.

So choose carefully what you drip.

The world has enough people spreading outrage, cynicism, and despair. It is starving for men and women who quietly, consistently, and deliberately drip hope.

Be one of them.

Because hope, like despair, is contagious. And when enough ordinary people choose to become Hope Drippers, families heal, communities grow stronger, and the future becomes brighter for the generations that follow.

I believe the best is yet to come.

Rich Christiansen