my friend Jordan recently asked me to write a little excerpt about hope for a series she was doing on Instagram and it felt pretty fitting for the time we are in now with social isolation, lack of work and income, and our day-to-day life being flipped upside down. hope isn’t something that can be really summed up for me. it comes from a foundation with jesus and knowing that ultimately, i will always have hope. this may not be the case for some and maybe they look elsewhere for hope. regardless, i “hope” these words normalize what we are all feeling to some degree and give you peace and comfort that there will be a tomorrow and a day after that and we will keep living and loving and we will make it through this. together.
so here it is - some thoughts about hope:
i think hope looks different throughout life. when you’re younger, a hope almost just feels like a wish for the extraordinary. you hope that the boy you have a crush on likes you back. you hope that your older brother lets you ride with him to school (because he’s way cooler than you). you hope for good grades and to be included. then you get a little bit older and you find yourself hoping for your dream career and your future spouse and to create things that mean something to somebody. you hope for purpose. hope suddenly starts to feel a bit heavier and you often ask yourself, “how am i supposed to hold this, while trying to hold everything else?” maybe somewhere along the way you set hope down because you just couldn’t bear the weight. or so you thought. but i think if there’s anything i remind myself of and i want to remind you of, it’s this: hope isn’t heavy. it’s free. weightless. you just have to choose it. hope doesn’t always have to be for something big. sometimes being hopeful just means we choose to put our feet on the ground for one more day. sometimes being hopeful means we choose to live this life we’ve been given for one more day. we choose to show up... one more day. hopeful moments are everywhere if we really look for them. free little nuggets of encouragement, sprinkled all over, willing us to fight. one. more. day. a little flower that finally bloomed. the birds singing in the morning. a kind stranger at the coffee shop. these moments are hope-filled moments. you see, you don’t need to be able to see past today or tomorrow or next week to be hopeful. you just have to believe that there is more for you. there is good for you. there is a reason you are here and a reason why you’re needed here. i think as i’ve gotten older, i’ve realized that hope is just a choice we get to make everyday. a real and tangible choice and it’s longing, so desperately, to be chosen. because this life is worth fighting for. worth living for. worth hoping for.
i’m rooting for you.
