Having a solid sense of hope
This #thankyouthursday, I am grateful for having a solid sense of hope.
You may recall that I lost my job at the end of 2022. (Or, if you don’t read #thankyouthursday every week, you may not know, because I only explicitly mentioned it once.)
Since then, life has really been, well, life-ing. Kind of a lot. And while some of the totally unpredictable events of the last eight months have been incredibly joyous, a lot of them have been rather stressful.
This whole time, I have been faithful, as in, full of faith. Some months that faith has been harder to feel good about, but for the most part, I have enough practice with life-ing to confidently trust that this, too, shall pass. I believe things work out.
What I have not been this whole time is hopeful. I think hope and faith are closely related, but, for me, faith is a more straightforward proposition: I choose to believe, no matter what. Hope, on the other hand, seems riskier. There is vulnerability involved in admitting what I really want, in choosing to believe that a specific outcome might truly be possible.
Not too long ago I heard someone give an acronym for HOPE: Hold on; peace exists.
That descriptor helped me relate hope to faith—I know how to hold on to faith, so, maybe it’s also okay to hold on to hope. To believe that peace exists.
And for that matter, I KNOW peace exists. I have been finding it all along, often in glimpses or glimmers, sometimes in full-on sunbursts of serenity.
My having hope is not dependent on my circumstances. Even so, this week my circumstances shifted for the better, and my sense of hope solidified. And I am grateful.
Love > fear,
Christina