Courage in Hope

“Having hope will give you courage. You will be protected and will rest in safety.” Job 11:18

Every now and then life comes at you hard, and hits you with something you weren’t expecting. Just when you start to settle into a calm (it’s not perfect, but it’s calm and you’re Satisfied) life says no, and that calm is disrupted. That happened to me today. I spent the better part of my day in bed in tears because my little sliver of Satisfaction took a hit and I was overcome with Sadness. I was so overcome I didn’t want to shake it. I didn’t want to be brave or strong or Satisfied. I just wanted to cry, and so I did. I let my emotions pour out of me as my close friend listened and let me be vulnerable. He’s a good friend. And more than that he’s a great friend because he did what people who love and respect and listen to you do… he turned my own words on me. Can you believe it? He took the “wise therapist” words (his title, not mine lol) I had given him many times and used them against me to strengthen me in my time of weakness. I’ll always love him for that. So in my transparency gush for the week (you guys have been getting that from me a lot in 2021… I see what you’re doing, God) I’m going to once again give you all some pieces of me and hope they do something for you, too.

Hope can be hard to have when your world is turning upside down. And it’s because Hope depends on you being stronger than you want to be sometimes. You see, hope is defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. And that works… as long as what you’re hoping for seems possible. It’s when it feels impossible and uncertain that things get out of control. Or so it would seem. That’s me today. Today as my world was turning upside down hope was the last thing I could find. And I couldn’t find it for one simple reason: I didn’t want to look. You see, sometimes when sadness can get overwhelming looking for hope doesn’t initially feel better. It can be a whirlwind of possibilities spinning around you just outside your grasp because you can’t touch them today. Today is the key word in that sentence. Today is about instant gratification. If all our problems could be solved today then there’d by no need for hope. And if we don’t need hope, we don’t need to have faith.

We absolutely need to have faith. Why? Because the world isn’t set up for instant gratification. Most of the time we cannot and will not get what we want instantly. And that is the harsh reality I had to sit in today. For all I wanted things to just magically be ok today, I know they can’t. So how did I not spend the entire day wallowing in self pity, drowning my sorrows in some unhealthy habit? Full transparency, I thought about it. I thought about turning off the light and burying my head in my tear stained pillow and just trying again tomorrow. But I couldn’t. And I’ll share with you the three things that really helped me the most.

First, I remembered that I COULD get up. There are many people out there who can’t and today I wasn’t one of them. I’m really grateful for that. Because depression is a real thing and the many people that are in my life who deal with it wish that they didn’t. So I took a full assessment of myself and my situation, realized my strength and walked in it. That’s what I want you to do the next time you’re faced with what feels like a hopeless situation. Take a good long look at what feelings you’re assigning yourself and make sure they need to be there and need to be in control. For the time that I needed to shed my tears, Sadness DID need to be in control. And I gave it it’s place, but I couldn’t stay there. And that’s all that growth in emotions is. It’s learning which emotion needs to take center stage and for how long. Think about a stage play or your favorite movie. Every character plays a pivotal role in the story, but only one character can be the center of it at a time. And depending on the desired outcome of the story, you need the right character to come out on top.

Second, I had to let go of my need to control the outcome. The problem in front of me that’s affecting me doesn’t actually belong to me. I want to fix it so bad, and it’s not mine to fix. So my friend reminded me of the Serenity prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Letting go of the need to control allows me so much grace. Because I don’t have to absorb the guilt that comes with being in charge of the outcome. So that’s point two for you. Let go of the need to have the final say, and put your faith in something and someone else to get it right.

And finally, I remembered who I’ve been learning from these past few weeks: Job. Job was faced with the biggest loss of control and attempts to be Satisfied when he was being hit with loss after loss after loss. And somehow he managed to keep enduring it all. He had hope. He hoped with everything in him that God had a reason for the trials and tribulations and that He would bring him out. All he had to do was cast his sins away and grab hold to hope. And the bible tells us the words he was given were “Having hope will give you courage. You will be protected and will rest in safety.” (Job 11:18) Having hope will give you courage. I definitely believe that’s true. As long as I hope for the best possible outcome, and remember God’s promise to me, I can be brave enough to get through each day until it does. It doesn’t say it will be easy, but it IS possible. And I’m putting my hope in the possible.

So I hope this helps you, dear readers. I hope that you remember and walk in your strength, that you let go of your need to control the outcome, and that you put your hope in the possible and that it gives you courage. The best thing that my friend gave me today was a reminder. He said “remember who you are and that you know how to do this.” And he’s right. I do know how to do this. And so do you. If you didn’t before, now you’re equipped to at least start on the journey to finding hope in courage. And remember, I have faith in you.