Corsha’s Faith in Hope

For many people hope is the foundation on which they survive. Corsha Lake a 23 year-old St. Petersburg native and a Psychology major at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, defines what hope means to her. “Hope means believing that things will work out when the situation looks bleak.” Lake’s faith is laced into her definition of hope, “My faith in God definitely has a lot to do with how I think of hope. He is my source of strength when I have exhausted all my options and nothing seems to be working.” Accepting Christ as her savior was a journey that began when she was 19 years old. She continues to pursue her faith as a Bible Study leader in the organization Intervarsity.

Reflecting back on a time in her life that hope brought her through, Lake shared an incident that occurred at her home in her brother’s fit of rage. He threw a chair through the window of their home and used a brick to shatter the window of the family Chevy Impala. Her parents filled with anger pressed charges against their son and proclaimed that he was no longer welcomed in their home. Looking at the damages of the after math, Lake said she cried and prayed. “It just took a bit of hope which was all I had at the time and things did work out.”

It is this time in her life that she uses as a testimony to inspire friends and family members that fall on times of hardship. Without fail she uses the memory of that incident to keep her positive in her current time of struggle of perusing a new job. She relies on faith as her hope to be optimistic in believing that she will be able to pay her rent and car note for the month. Lake believes that hope is all anyone has to carry them through and that it only takes a moment of trust to see if it works for others in their time of need. Poetically Lake shares, “Hope is like the wind. You can’t see it. You can feel it, and even if it goes away you know it will come back again.”