The Cost of Hope

For this blog i decided to read a short story from Chicken Soup for the Soul called 'The Cost of Hope' by Susan Hamilton. This story is about a woman named Danielle who is attending a womens group meeting. She has come to this meeting because she left her husband with her kids and was struggling to survive in a new city. She was having a hard time finding a bank to cash in her paycheck, and arrived at the meeting with only forty dollars in her pocket. When the meeting begins, she hears the story of another woman in the group, Amy. Amy was a mother who was just days away from losing her home, car, and phone service, and was living off the limited money she had left. Her husband had gambled away all of their savings. Danielle was very moved by this story, and claims to have heard "Gods soft whisper in her heart" and gave Amy 20 dollars-half of the money she owned total- after the meeting. When Danielle was about to leave, Amy came outside crying thanking her for the money because she was a medication-dependent diabetic who took the last of her pills that morning. She needed only 20 dollars for the refill. When Danielle was driving home, she tried one more bank to cash in her paycheck before she went home and found one to do it. This story is inspiring to me because it shows how much a small notion of kindness to someone can benefit them in ways that you don't know. I think the message portrayed in this story is that if you help others, it will come back around to you when you least expect it.