I wear a thin band of silver on my left hand.  Inscribed is the word Hope.

It serves as a reminder to hope.  To not let go of dreaming, of desiring.  I’ve done that a lot over the last few months.  I’ve given up on dreaming for my future.  The day dream of what a year or 10 years from now looks like.

It’s been too hard.  I explained to Shawn over the weekend that it feels like we were punched in the stomach & I’m still trying to catch my breath.  I get scared to try to stand back up because I’m so afraid up getting knocked back down.  After all, you can’t fall if you’re already on the ground.

Shawn said some hard words to me recently.  They cut because my pride & my fear are comfortable here on the ground.  But I needed to hear them.

I need to start dreaming again.  I can’t go any further until I do so.

So today I choose to begin dreaming again.  I choose to let my mind wander to the what may possibly be.  I know the steps will be heavy with trepidation but I’m choosing to take the baby steps toward freedom.

I’m learning that hope requires courage.

To step off of the shore into the temperamental ocean of hope is daunting.  We never know what awaits us.

If we’ve been disappointed in the expectations of hope, it’s a scary thing knowing that disappointment may crash over us again.

But there is great reward when we take up courage.  If we don’t take courage and allow our hearts to stay far back from the seam of the ocean meeting the shore, we will never move forward.  We will miss so much.

Does this make hope easier, knowing that if we don’t dare to do so we will miss out?  Sadly, no.  If we’ve been hurt, no amount of feel good sayings makes the trusting in hope an easy task.

But I’m learning.

Learning to pick up my sword and give my mightiest roar as I take slow steps into hope.  A friend reminds me often that baby steps are okay, and I’m grateful for the encouragement these words offer.  This same friend calls me Braveheart.  Instilling deep within me that I have the strength to breach the waves.

So, I’m reminding myself to take courage, to take heart.  I’m learning that it will make this journey to learning to hope again easier to endure.

“I’m so tired losing my hope. I’m so tired of sleeping. I’m so tired of forgetting to trust. I’m so tired of settling.”

My sister-in-law, Nina, penned these words and as I listened to the song the other day and they gripped me.

As strange as it sounds, giving up hope is difficult.  A heart’s natural tendency is to hope.  So when we force it not to, it goes all or nothing.

As much as I don’t want to give into the vulnerability that hope calls for and reality’s whispers of disappointment, I am tired of not hoping, of not trusting.

Kick starting our hearts to hope again, to trust again isn’t an easy task.  And frankly I’m not sure how it happens.

All I know as I listen again to her words, is that something needs to change.  Whatever intentionality needs to happen for my heart and my mind to begin hoping again.

Do you have any recommendations for kick starting hope?

Do you think that hope is something that just happens, or is it like trust in that it is a slow growing process?

I was making my way through late afternoon rush hour pondering Noah.  I can relate to his being stuck on a boat in the middle of an ocean.  Figuratively mind you, not literally.

Part of what has left me grasping at the threads of hope today is this feeling of being abandoned by God.

As I minded my own driving and bewared of those around me I wondered if Noah had felt abandoned by God.  God had given him a definitive time frame in which He would cause it to rain:  40 days & 40 nights.  But I wonder if during sleepless nights, rocked by crashing waves if he felt it would never end.  If during the tense moments with his wife, or the marital spats between his sons and their wives if he wondered if God had forgotten about him and in His anger towards man’s sin just left him, these seven other people, & an ark full of testy animals adrift in this forsaken water wasteland.

Surely, after the rain stopped and they simply floated and floated and floated for 10+ months still encased in Beaver Wood, he felt as though God had abandoned him.

Forgotten His promise to him.

As I had been reading this account of Noah and the flood I was stopped by four words.  Four powerful words:

But God remembered Noah.

I find hope in these words.

A hope that God hasn’t left me adrift in the ocean no matter how much it feels like it.  That in the midst of these last five and a half years of journeying to something greater that God has for me, He remembered Prudence.

He remembered the contention between husband and wife, and the tears each have shed as we walk this journey.  He remembered the confessions of sin and the begging Him to move when it seemed I could cry no more over the weariness & exhaustion.

He remembered.

This of course isn’t to say that we still aren’t making our way, and that our “ark” has rested on dry ground.  It hasn’t.  But what it does do is encourages my heart to cling to whatever hope I can.

{image source}

Hope.

It feels so distant.  And honestly I’m fearful of it.

To me, hope is the looking forward to, it is an anticipation.

I’m leery of anticipating what the future holds for us, for me because I’m still working through hope deferred.

Hope requires trust, and trust is presently difficult.

(Image Source)

At the time when God gave me this word it meant something completely different than what I hold in my hands this chilly winter’s day.  During those moments when the heat of summer beat down on my neck, it held an excitement for what might be, a dream.

Today it means something completely different, and like I said it causes fear and hesitation in my heart.

However, I accept this word that God has serenaded over me for the last five months.  I’m choosing to be vulnerable.

I hold out shaking hands with leery fingers and accept this gift.  He would not have given it to me if He didn’t think know I would need it.

Thank you for joining and walking with me in the journey to hope.

Mandy Steward of Messy Canvas wrote this great post on what to do with your One Word.  I plan to incorporate some of these into my year.  In fact, I’ve created a board at Pinterest.

Join our community at One Word 365.

{dóchas is the Irish word for hope.  i read the word in book and loved it.}

Are you joining in One Word this year, if so what is your Word?

Is there anything you’re doing with your Word to keep it flowing through your mind?