Courage to Hope

It takes courage to hope.

The narrowing of our lives over the past two plus years have caused feelings of hopelessness and helplessness to skyrocket. The mental health impact is visible in the disheartened voices crying out for God to give us a break from it all.

We have vacillated between a sense of dread that it's only a matter of time before Covid will hit us and affect our daily routines even further and hope that the vaccines would rescue us at the very least from dreaded hospitalization.

In the meantime, our "normal" lives continue. The timing of this latest variant and surge seems cruel to say the least. It leaves us to wonder how long we have to live with heightened awareness and vigilance. It leaves us to question, is there any hope to seeing an end to this time in our history?

It takes courage to hope.

Hope is not just a word in the dictionary. It is an action we take to move us forward beyond the daunting circumstances of our lives. Whether they are life altering, cancer and family loss for me personally, or just cause us to reevaluate and restructure our lives temporarily, our circumstances can throw a shockwave of doubt and fear into all we do.

Willa Cather said, "there are some things you can learn better in calm, some in storm." Challenges are the storms of life. How we face them determines, in a large part, how we survive them. At times of crises and challenges, which the last two years certainly have presented, it takes courage to step into the eye of the hurricane where hope lives. Trusting a better outcome and throwing ourselves into the eye provides us with an unobstructed view of the hope of there being a brighter and better day ahead. But stepping into the eye of the hurricane takes courage.

The last four months of my life, I have been whirled and swirled through the ferocious winds of life's hurricane, slipping into the eye for protection only to be ripped out again with another challenge facing me. Yet each time another wind-whipped issue comes hurling at me, I know that all I have to do is remember that my hope lives in the eye. It takes courage though to reach for that hope and yet, my faith assures me that that is where there is peace and comfort and a sense of life as God intended it.

Have courage today...seek your hope in the eye of the hurricane and live beyond your seemingly out of control circumstances!

"Eye of hurricane,

Where hope awaits to protect,

Lifting our spirit."