(Thoughts from chapter ten of Things We’ve Handed Down: Twelve Letters I Leave for You, based on the book Wishful Thinking by Frederick Buechner.)
There are writers whose words feel like home. Frederick Buechner is that kind of writer for me. Not just an author of books, but an architect of meaning—building beauty from mystery, framing faith in ways both fragile and fierce.
His book Wishful Thinking has stayed with me like a trusted friend. It didn’t offer all the answers. It offered a way of seeing—a way of thinking, Not with blind optimism, But with honest hope.
When I wrote chapter ten of Things We’ve Handed Down, I wasn’t just reflecting on Buechner’s words from that book, or the many other books he wrote which impacted my life. I was living them. I was letting his questions sit beside my own, letting his wisdom whisper truth in the middle of my mess.
His words reminded me that true wishful thinking is not fiction. It’s not naïve. It’s not pretending the world is fine when it clearly isn’t. It’s choosing to believe that even in the brokenness, something beautiful is still being written.
And that has been the thread through every letter in this book. A search for real hope. A prayer in the dark. A Voice saying, “You are not alone.”
So, what if we take all the chapters I’ve written, all the stories passed down, all the books that shaped me, and we let them form a different kind of thinking?
Not shallow positivity. But deep, healing assurance. Assurance that God is with us. That we are known. That we are deeply loved. And that He will never leave us alone.
This is what wishful thinking can become. Not a wish we toss into a well, but a truth we carry in our soul.
The kind of thinking that dares to believe God is still speaking, still healing, still redeeming every part of the story.
So yes—keep thinking. Keep hoping. Keep remembering.
Because as Buechner taught us, faith is not the absence of doubt. It is the courage to believe that love will have the final word.
And that, my friend, is a kind of wishful thinking that is truer than we ever imagined.
