Learned Lesson Number Fifteen: Be Careful Where You Hang Your Hopes

Hope is a precious thing. Without it we cannot endure. Anything. When we learn how to properly access it, we can endure. Anything. So consider very carefully where you look for hope. And where you choose to put it, once you have found it.

When I was 9 years old, I wanted a horse. Really badly. I fervently hoped I would get a horse for Christmas. It was pretty much all I thought about. It was an impossibility. We lived in the suburbs, in a rental, with a tiny back yard. In spite of my mother’s very rational explanations of why I could not have a horse, I still hoped. In my logical little 9-year-old mind, she was just trying to throw me off with her reasoning. Horses eat grass. We had grass. A horse needs a fence. Got one of those, too. I could take care of the horse, I had read all the books, knew what they ate, how to groom them, and certainly how to love them. And besides, I had been praying for a horse. God would not let me down.

I did not get a horse. I still do not have a horse. My hopes were dashed, and have been many more times since then, and in much harsher ways. Yet I still believe in hope. And I still believe in God.

This is how the dictionary defines hope: “ The feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.” I kind of like this definition because it includes an “or”. So often we feel like our hopes have been destroyed because we did not get what we wanted. It is much easier to hang onto hope after not getting what we want when we can believe that the outcome might still be in our best interest. Even if we don’t see or feel that right away, due to our disappointment.

I also found that “expectation” was listed as a synonym for “hope”. I am not sure that I completely agree with this assessment. I think that expectations are closed and hope is open. Expectations are “It needs to be this, and it will be this”, while hope is more “I want it to be this, but if it isn’t, then something better will come”. I think that expectations are Earthly, and hope is Heavenly. This is where God comes in.

Recently while struggling with a rather painful loss of hope, (familiar territory for me the past few years) I looked up “Hope” in the topical guide of my scriptures. I found many inspiring references, but this is the one that linked to my soul, and made me sob just a little:

Romans 8:24-25 “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”

This connected with me on a visceral level, because I was in a place of desperately wanting to see evidence of what I was hoping for, and it was not coming. I had prayed for an answer and was led to this scripture. I realized that I was hanging my hopes in the wrong places. I was attaching them to humans and events. Events change, and humans are weak and imperfect, and cannot be trusted with my hopes. I likewise cannot be trusted with the hopes of others. No matter how much I love and trust them. No matter how much I want them to love and trust me.

Real hope, while often delivered via other humans, comes from God, and God alone. He is unchanging and immoveable. He is the only one who can see what “we see not”, and deliver it. And He does it on His timetable, not ours. To truly access real hope, we have to get our lives aligned with God so that we can see the signs He sends to give us hope. If we are aligned with Him, the signs appear where we are looking. I have tested this, and I know it to be true. I hope for many things in my life that are not yet seen. I still hope for a horse. And for much bigger things than that. So I keep the channels open. I look for the signs. I roll with the disappointments in my life, and I forgive the weakness in myself and other humans. My hopes are hanging in a solid and immoveable place. I work daily at keeping them bright, while anxiously awaiting the time when I will be shown what I hope for, but do not yet see.