Hope

Last Sunday I was sitting in a church meeting where the topic of "hope" was being discussed. Immediately I was taken back to October 2008. The very same teacher was teaching a similar lesson on the same topic, though from different lesson material. In fact, I just looked back in my archives and found that I shared some of my favorite parts of the particular talk that was used in that lesson. If you're interested, you can read it here.

I remember I was sitting on the front row that Sunday, all alone. It had been just a few months since we'd lost the twins and I was still really struggling. I remember feeling a little frustrated by the intangible, elusiveness of hope... wanting so much to understand what it meant to have hope and how to capture its light in a way to have my burden eased a bit.

It felt frustrating to hear examples of when hope for something consisted more of concentrated hard work than anything else. What about those more faith-trying examples when no amount of hard work will make your dreams come true? How do you have hope when the one thing you want more than anything, and you're willing to do anything to make it come true, still evades you?

Well, as you can probably imagine, sitting through the lesson on hope this last Sunday wasn't nearly as painful, but I could still remember the feelings from three years ago so poignantly. I was mostly amazed at how differently things have turned out than I ever would have imagined. Back then I was too afraid to hope for what I have now.

Instead I tried to focus my hope in having more trust in God, in his purposes for my life, and in the time and way those purposes would  come about. But, more than that I just couldn't do. It was far too painful to hope for a family of my own, and somehow I think God understood and still blessed me with more than I was able to hope for.

There is still a lot about hope that I don't fully grasp. And yet, I cannot deny that I have experienced the feeling of hope, been blessed by the benefits of hope, and the healing that comes from hope. And, I just find myself hoping that those out there who are struggling with hope's elusiveness will somehow find the strength to continue to hang on until their hope sees them through to a brighter chapter of life.