Hope is a funny thing isn’t it? It’s beautiful and small and bright. It’s this fragile little egg that I keep close to my heart. Sometimes I lock my hope away just incase someone’s harsh words crack it’s brittle shell. Hope isn’t always fragile, though. Occasionally my hope is bold. It is so huge and overwhelming and naive, perhaps, that it forms a bulletproof shield around not only myself, but those that I love. I like that kind of hope, I like the hope that emboldens me more than reason or circumstance should allow.
I forget how to do that. I feel like I get trapped in the fragile hemisphere of hope. I feel like I bury that hope so deep inside of me that when I venture into the jungle to find it, all I seem to discover are thick, mangled vines of doubt. And without my hat and my whip, what a shame. I hate losing access to the big, brave hope.
I think I’ve used the word hope enough times, now, that it’s beginning to feel funny when I read it. Like when you and your little sister said “purple” so many times in a row that it eventually felt strange in your mouth. I make such liberal use of the word because that’s my rescue ‘copter when I’m lost, deep in the jungle. I mouth the word to myself, I play it on repeat in my mind. I choose to hope, again and again in the face of even the smallest inconveniences. Because that’s what’ll really get you when you’re down, the tiny thing that would have blown right by you yesterday. All of a sudden, three extra plates to wash spell the end of the world as we know it.
I encourage you to make hope your secret mantra when you struggle. Roll it around your tongue until chewing on it feels unfamiliar. I’ll warn you now, you will feel silly doing this. Silly to think that hope is a viable choice in the face of difficulty. Silly because maybe only kids hope that way. Silly because you’re muttering hope to yourself in your car. You might find in the end that hope was the most reasonable decision in the world.
I used to think hope was synonymous to wishing, eg, 'I hope I get a bicycle for Christmas '
I'm growing in the realisation that hope is something more concrete, a deep abiding sense that there is something good and indestructible in creation, and holding that fast keeps one from fear, all kinds of gloom, prevalent in the noise of media.
That hope is not external to be grasped at, but rather a deep
abiding spirit of peace.