The Perils of Relentless Hope

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to talk myself out of being hopeful.

Hope is dangerous. It’s alive and itchy and it will keep you up nights. It’s irrational and feisty and refuses to listen to reason. It’ll make you look for signs in places you may not find them, muddle your brain, and tug at your heart. Hope makes you take risks you otherwise wouldn’t. You invest what you might have protected. You say yes when you know it might hurt. You hold on when it would be so much easier to let go. You walk boldly into situations where the letdown and rejection are so dang likely you know you should run the other direction. But you don’t. Because maybe, just maybe…

I love that we are sometimes dangerously, relentlessly hopeful. Somehow we’ll get an idea in our heads or hearts and just hold on to it, blissfully ignorant to horrible odds and obvious improbability. Sometimes, despite our resistance and fear and reluctance and pleading and whining, that stubborn little spark of hope will set up camp inside us, carve its name into the walls of our hearts, and politely refuse to go away.

I love the picture of God in my mind, sowing these tiny seeds of hope, winking in my direction as he whispers: “Little girl, you are going to hate every minute of this hope. You’re going to fight it and doubt me and pray that I’ll take it away from you and leave you to your comfort and your failure and your normal. It is going to frustrate you and grow you and make you learn, and you aren’t going to understand it at all. You’re going to envy the people who can be jaded or doubtful, who are never surprised when life lets them down, and feel like that might be the easier path. You’re going to try to do that thing where you insist I won’t bless you. But you’re wrong, kiddo, because I’m going to love you like you won’t believe. I’m going to plant this hope in your heart, make you scared and uncomfortable, and then I’m going to rock your world. You can trust me. You can trust me. You can hope.”

So. Here’s hoping.

love.