The Other Side of Hope
“Rekindling Hope in Today’s Youth” is the mission of The Ranches. So many young people today have lost hope; lost hope in their family, lost hope in their situation and lost hope in their future. The answer to this problem is not simply more hope, but hope with commitment and dedication to a permanent relationship. The truth of the matter is that, as our commitment to our young people gets diminished by circumstances and cynicism, their ability to believe in the people that they should look up to gets equally diminished and cynicism begins to constrict relationships and eventually destroys hope.
Hope comes in many forms and with varying degrees of legitimacy. Hope in mom and dad, hope in sports heroes, hope in winning the lottery are all treated the same and all come with, in this generation’s experience, the same expectation of disappointment. It seems that the mantra of this generation has sadly become “If you start off disappointed, everything is a pleasant surprise.” While this generational and cultural gap has caused many good and decent people to give up on the younger generation, it is also the starting point to understanding what needs to be done.
Our goal at The Ranches is to rekindle hope, but first we must build trust and we must create a predictable track record of being there for kids and being honest with them, even when that honesty is difficult.
Once we have earned trust and created an environment of honesty and predictability, children can begin to hope again. In most cases, this new hope is less of an unrealistic and overly optimistic hope and more of a realistic and guarded hope. Instead of hoping that a dysfunctional family will suddenly become perfect, we see children begin to have hope in their own ability to create a functional family for their future children. Instead of hoping to win the lottery, we see hope in attending college and earning a life that they can be proud of. And instead of hope in finding a fairy tale, we see hope in the love of those that are dedicated and faith in a God that they cannot see.
My hope lies in both the children that we serve and the generous people that donate to our mission of Rekindling Hope in Today’s Youth.
~Heath Kull – President of The Ranches
