by Tracy Johnson, Spiritual Counselor

What about hope? Have you wearied of hearing about suffering, and grief and taking time to “sit with them”?  Are you ready to hear about hope and what it looks like right now?

Many of us are clamoring for hope, we are hungry for it, we need it, we want it. 

Hope for a the bell curve to flatten. Hope for the quarantine to lift. Hope for the market to rebound. Hope for jobs to be restored. Hope for a cure. Hope for an end to the madness of our world in the midst of Covid19.

What does hope look like now? 

When we are feeling powerless, unable to make things happen, the structures of hope begin to collapse within us. For some of us, the current circumstances are stirring old places in our stories, places where we first experienced powerlessness and the subsequent loss of hope.

I get that. My motto for years was “plan on the worst happening, when it doesn’t you can be happy.” I was a woman who hoped for very little. Hope seemed foolish and unhelpful. It was a set up for inevitable disappointment. I also wasn’t big on dreaming, too many of those had felt crushed over the years so I dispensed with dreaming along with hope. That worked well until it didn’t.

About twenty years ago I found myself facing crushing revelations and realizations. The story I had worked so hard to bury had made its way to the surface of my life and I was paralyzed and hopeless. That was the ground where my journey of recovery began.

Hope is birthed in seasons just like the one we are living in, when powerlessness and loss are all too present. When we find ourselves stripped down and facing the reality that our strategies for making life work are no longer helpful. While this is disorienting it is also the perfect ground for God to show us a new way of being.

What has your journey with hope looked like up until now? How have you made life work, navigated disappointment, faced loss, felt pain? 

In the disorienting quiet of sheltering in place we can hear what we may have missed in the noise that filled our lives before the pandemic, before we were quarantined. 

What are you hearing now? What are you noticing? What is aching inside of you?

Hope begins with that ache, the ache for the restoration of what has been lost to us. 

For those of us who are willing to brave the wilderness right now, naming what has been lost and risking the desire for something new becomes possible. What if hope is something that transcends circumstance? What if it is gritty, earthy and tangible? What if.

We are poised on the edge of something new. Our world will not ever be the same again. We have yet to know what all the ramifications are of what we are now living through, but one thing is certain: we will need men and women equipped with hope and imagination to take us forward. 

Are you ready to engage that ache and begin to wonder, dream, and activate a space of hope?

God has planted something unique within your heart and soul, something that is needed and necessary. We are here to help you start wondering about it.