Seasons of True Hopelessness

  The other day I was chatting with my counsellor and telling her I was in this season of true hopelessness. I felt like this was sort of the end of something really vital I had held onto for my entire life. There is a verse in the Bible that talks about your heart being sick without hope and another one about how without vision people perish. I have always thought that I needed hope to keep going and to be good enough.

  So many of my little hopes, and my big hopes, have come to an end. I have not felt like this is some sort of poor me victim response, but just simply my coming to reality. I cannot change people, I cannot be enough to make people want to change, I cannot be worthy of love to others, those are some big ones, but then there are the other ones too. I always hoped in my adult years I could have a horse, or live on property, or live in community. I have realized more and more that while all of these things had the best of intentions and were also a way of protecting me and keeping my head up it was sort of like a little child just holding out until they had dessert or their birthday and hoping that would make everything better or more manageable.

   My counsellor talked to me about how true hope often comes out of total despair and that the hope that comes is more realistic and more helpful. How it is actually more sustaining and can bring more peace. So it is something I have been thinking on when I can. 

  True hope for me now looks something like this ~ I can choose my attitude today. I can choose to offer something different to my family right now, I can choose to offer words of kindness. I can choose to let go of this offense and I can choose to communicate clearly. I can choose to put boundaries in place and stick with them, I can choose what actions I want to take.

  It goes much deeper than all of my 'if onlys.' So many of those centered on other people's actions and gave them more control than they ever should have had. 

 Do I still wish for things? Of course. Do I still long for change? Yes, yes I do. However I don't kid myself and think that if only this happened or if only this person did this would life be transformed. 

 I am sure I will revert back in moments of weakness to the sweet hopes from younger years but with the capability I hope I have gained as an adult I can pull myself in, tell myself the truth and make more realistic sustaining choices.

 We shall see how it goes.

xo