In our lives, hope plays an important role in providing us with support, a sense of holding and grounding especially when life feels very unknown or hard to bear. Hope comes into our lives when we cannot do anything practical like change a situation. Situations like when you receive a diagnosis of illness, enduring chronic pain, miscarriage, or concussion. Situations like these confront us with the question: now what? Or they at times can feel prescriptive, that possibilities have ceased. Often when we encounter situations like this, we struggle with how do we endure?
Hope can be defined as an attitude of pure possibility. Where there is possibility there is hope. And when I hope, I’m holding on to an intention- a wish, a will, a value that I am not letting go of. Hope is an inner activity of not giving up, and a stance of persevering. Hope is an attitude, one we can adopt and often times is needed when facing the hard in life.
Hope isn’t sugar coating things, or focusing on the silver lining instead of the reality being faced. Hope looks at all the possibilities, not just the obvious or stereotypical. Hope is not always easy to hold onto or maintain. Hope can be a resource when you feel in the thick of it, in the mess, in the muddle, in the tension of this season of having to face and deal with things not planned on, not wanted, not welcomed. In these times, hope ties us to a value that keeps us enduring.
Many times we don’t feel as if we have enough in us to have hope and in these times it is a good reminder that it can be borrowed from others. I often find myself in therapy holding hope for my clients. Being in a position of being able to see a bit of the light down the path from where they presently are, and I find my role being one of holding the potential, of standing in the gap. The beauty of counselling is that we don’t have to walk these paths alone but can lean in and allow another to have some hope for us. Maybe you are in a season of having some hope, or perhaps it feels hope is gone, or you are needing to borrow some from another. Whatever the place you find yourself in, be reminded that it is an attitude, that it can be held by others for us, and is usually anchored to a greater value in our lives.
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