Hope Chest
What is a hope chest? It can be many things to different people.
My parents have a cedar hope chest full of memorabilia and keepsakes from a baby they lost. A beautiful chest makes a great way to honor a lost loved one. The family can fill the hop chest with photos, keepsakes, clothing, dried funeral flowers and more.
The Amish use hope chests as a way to send a young girl into marriage with some household basics like china, linens and kitchenware. This can help a newlywed start her home off on the right foot without creating a financial burden.
To me, a hope chest is a combination of keepsakes and preparation for the future, but it means so much more than just physical items in a box. A hope chest can be a representation of a young woman’s value, skills, childhood, preparedness and more. Each item that a girl selects to put into her hope chest can be a symbol of money saved to purchase a big ticket item; a skill learned and perfected to create something beautiful for her future home; a prayer life focused on the Lord’s will for her future; wisdom stored away in the hopes of someday directing a home and creating a joyful and peaceful atmosphere from the work of her own hands.
Historically, hope chests have been in many different cultures. Ancient cultures used hope chest to store treasure and important documents. Think of Egyptian tombs full of both wood and gold crates. Europeans adopted the practice of keeping hope chests as woodworking became more efficient and made the chests more affordable to all classes. Cedar became popular and is still in use today due to its sturdiness- it’s unlikely to warp or crack and it deters insects.
The modern hope chest uses a lot of the historical ideas. The beauty of a hope chest is in making it unique to each young lady. It’s a process that takes years, maybe even decades. A mother and daughter can spend the years of adolescence creating a beautiful gift for the girls future, filled with things that the girl loves and cherishes.
In times past, marriages were based on the idea of a dowry. This idea has morphed throughout the centuries. At one time, the man would pay the father a dowry to replace the young girls value. Young women served their families before marriage, and a father would expect quite a large sum to cover the loss of a daughter’s help. At some point, some dowries may have been paid to the woman- a gift from her new husband to prove that he could support her financially and a way to start off her new home.
My goal in creating a hope chest is to fill the concept of a dowry- proving my daughters’ value to prospective husband while also providing for her future home.Come along as we share the journey of creating hope chests-full of our memories together, skills learned, and special times tucked away for a dream-life.