Episode 124 Hope – A Light in the Dark

Episode 124 Hope – A Light in the Dark   Desmond Tutu said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” You don’t get out of bed in the morning without hope. We have hope in many things. Hope in God, hope in family, hope our efforts will bear fruit, hope we’ll find that perfect someone, hope we’ll overcome a sickness, hope that life holds beauty, hope the toilet won’t back up, hope our kids will live well, hope we get the job, hope we get pregnant, hope we don’t get pregnant, hope we’ll lose 10 lbs.…hope is the reason we keep on keepin on. But what happens when you hit those patches, the dissolving of a relationship, the terminal diagnosis, the loss of a job, severe bullying, despair and overwhelming self-criticism for another failure, and hope gets up and walks out of the room? A few years ago a friend separated from her husband. She moved to a new town, she started doing emotional work and building a new community around her, but her hope ebbed and flowed. “What can I do for you?” I asked. “I just need hope” she said, “and sometimes that’s hard to come by.” So this episode is for her, and for all the people who have moments where that light of hope isn’t visible in the storm you are currently in – that would be all of us. One of the spaces and stories that creates hopelessness is that space of feeling as if we have failed, are failing, or are destined to keep screwing things up. This heavy space is like a drain that sucks the light right out of our souls. So let me share an idea that I heard in church the other day: When a parent pays for a child to take piano lessons so that they can learn a new skill, develop a talent, understand music, they do not expect the child will sit down and instantly be a concert pianist. They hope the child will sit and practice day after day before even a beginner song can be played. They don’t want the child to pay them back for the lessons, they want the child to take the opportunity given to them to learn something new. They hope the child will respond to the gift and keep practicing year after year until the skill is acquired. So it is with our Heavenly Father/Mother, with God. We have been given opportunities in our lives to learn many, many things. We often learn these things through trial and error. God doesn’t expect us to be an expert at them out of the gate. We will practice love. We will practice disciplining our minds and bodies, we will practice patience. We will practice overcoming judgment. We will practice sharing and playing nice. We will practice loving ourselves. We will practice healthy boundaries. We will practice living big. We will practice communicating well. Every day we will have opportunities to practice, with every interaction and experience before us. We always get to keep trying. And, we are all practicing different songs. It’s important to remember that there is never a fall or a fail, a wrong note, where we should stay down. It’s common that when we feel we have failed at something – a marriage, self-control, an expectation, something new we tried, that dark mists of shame and hopelessness, discouragement and futility can easily start to build and swirl at our feet  – this is the common human experience. My belief is that it is the adversary looking for every crack in our armor, in an attempt to drain us of hope and increase the darkness we live in. Whether or not you believe in an adversary – a force of darkness that competes with the light, it is the human experience to feel both darkness and light and to choose which they will gravitate toward.  For me the hope comes from not staying in a place of self beat-up, but instead asking myself what I learned from the situation and then being kind to myself and moving forward with the new knowledge I gained to try again – to keep moving toward light.  We are never unworthy or unwanted.  We are simply...