It’s a four letter word.  Nowhere could it be more palpable than in this South Florida church  where we visit each January with our son.

Practically a pilgrimage, this annual return to a place that attracts scores of mostly young people seeking sobriety draws us in.

We are with Jacob, seated beside him.  Around us sit 220 men and women (my husband counted them), every face locked on that of the speaker at the front of the room.  This night the speaker is very funny.  He recounts his 15 years of sobriety with references to a past this audience knows too well.  It’s the sobriety they hunger for – and the joy that makes them laugh.

I glance around at the faces filling the rows of seats, trying not to stare.   Only one or two appears too pale or too thin.   No one looks out with haunted eyes.  There are no heads bobbing, no one leaning into a neighbor or nodding off while the speaker recounts a tale everyone has lived

At the end – too many to form a circle – we stand and hold hands in our aisles.  I close my eyes.  The deep timbre of hundreds of voices enfolds me.  My prayer embraces every one of these “children’ and I am reminded again, as in all these meetings, that somewhere out there mothers and fathers are praying, too.

Jacob stands beside me, holding my hand.  This month he will celebrate seven years in recovery, achieved one day at a time.

From this South Florida church the four-letter word that rises to the starlit sky is…Hope.