Love Stroke: Looking for Hope

It is natural to look for hope when you’re in a fraught situation. Your mother has a stroke and you scan the world for signs from the universe that she will be okay. Or a spouse sustains a head injury and you start superstitiously avoiding walking under ladders on the off-chance that old wives’ tale is correct.

Kelly and Brad Marsh’s book, Love Stroke, has a story about looking for signs of hope while Kelly is in the hospital immediately following her stroke. This new book, told from both the caretaker and patient’s point-of-view, kicks off another stallment of our online book club.

We’d love to read it together, but you can still participate in these posts even if you haven’t read the book. Comment down below or on our Facebook page.

Looking for Signs

Brad explains on page 15 the importance of looking for signs in the days after his wife’s stroke. “In times like this, people need hope, encouragement, and faith because nothing good happens fast and all you have is time to imagine the worst.”

Looking for those signs that everything will be okay counterbalances the dread you feel when your imagination runs through the worst possible scenarios. No one could promise Brad that everything would turn out fine, so he searched down his own hope in the form of random pennies.

Collecting Pennies

Kelly’s family stayed calm immediately following her stroke by looking for pennies, which they took to be a sign of comfort delivered by her late grandfather. One rolled out of a magazine. Another dropped off a man’s lap and rolled towards them across the floor.

Brad admits, “In spite of my desperation, I wasn’t sure that the pennies were a sign of anything, but I believed Kelly would think so, and at that point, I was glad for any encouragement I could get.”

Looking for pennies certainly couldn’t hurt. If it helped family members feel better, it was a small good thing during a tense time.

Tell us about a time when you looked for signs from the universe. What signs did you receive?

Join this online book club! Copies of Love Stroke can be purchased through all online book retailers including Amazon.

Image: Slgckgc via Flickr via Creative Commons license