Hopefulness

I’m wrestling with the idea of hopefulness right now.  Its definition is shifting in my mind, squeezed out of its usual place by the unusual  pressures aimed at me from within and without.

What is its usual place, you ask? Well, think of the word “hopeful”.  What comes to mind?  If you’re like me, you think of up-tilted chins sporting confident smiles.  You think of bright colors and optimistic decisions to “assume the best” of people and situations.  You think of a row of shiny glasses of water—all half full.  Hopefulness means positivity, sunshine, and dogged cheerfulness despite all odds. Right?

But at the moment, the odds are stacked higher than I’ve ever seen them.  I feel enormous pressure to perform to standards both real and imagined, but I consistently fall short of the mark. You know those days when you’ve been crying so hard that positivity and cheerfulness feel like salt rubbed in a wound?  Yeah.

I’m a self-sufficient gal…and it’s not a good thing. I’ve tried pulling myself up by my bootstraps so many times that my boots lost their straps. Sometimes I glued the straps back on and kept walking despite the blisters. But now the blisters hurt too badly. And I’m tired.

In the past, I hoped for better performance. I hoped that I could become stronger, run faster, do better, and that somehow I would attain perfection. Here, at the end of my strength and endurance, I admit that I can’t conjure up change—or hopefulness!—for myself even if I scraped the bottom of those boots. Now, I know that I just contradicted every Disney slogan I ever heard as a kid, but it’s reality.

Hope must be based on reality. 

This is where I CHOOSE to believe a different definition of hope. My emotions, as real as they are to me, are slippery and unreliable. My abilities, as great as I sometimes think they are, are NOT enough. Reality must be found in a reliable Person, one who never lies, never gets tired, and never runs out. Only God fits that bill. Here is what He says about the hope I have:

“No one who hopes in you [God] will ever be put to shame” (Psalm 25:3)

"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character, and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." (Romans 5:3-5)


"And the God of all grace...after you have suffered for a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast." (1 Peter 5:10)

On my own, suffering produces blisters and exhaustion. But when I anchor my hopes on the truths God tells me, the same suffering produces a bouquet of good things, crowned by hope that will not put me to shame.