Faith: Am I Ready to Hope Again?

Hope is much like a cat in the Dark--you only know it's there by the reflection of its eyes--which means there is Light nearby.

-- Terri Guillemets--

I'm not a pessimist.  And, despite everything that's happened, I don't think I'm turning into one.  I did think the pessimist spirit was gaining on me for a bit, but it never actually caught up.  

I used to be an optimist.  I hesitate to call myself one now.  The first definition Google provides for that type of person is someone who is "hopeful and confident about the future."  Yeah, that doesn't quite describe me really. 

On average, I have not been very hopeful or confident about my future.  But sometimes, confetti sized images, of a future that could be....not just any future...but one where I get everything I want...float down into my thoughts.

A future where I am healed.  A future where I am a mom.  A future where I'm hopeful and confident about...anything.  

And then sometimes these images, these teeny tiny visions of the perfect everything turn into day dreams, or something I think about for longer than a few seconds while trying to fall asleep. And then, inconveniently, sometimes these thoughts turn into such intense feelings of wanting, longing and hoping that I have to blink a few times or shake my head to make the visions dissipate quickly. 

I remind myself that I can't waste any time hoping that these things will happen. Or wishing I wanted have that type of confident hope again.. I don't want to live my life wishing, or die feeling that my life was lacking...thinking on all the things I hoped for and how they just weren't in "God's plan" for me.  

And this does make me sad. Feeling hopeful and confident about my future carried me through kidney failure.  But I like to say that I'm more of a realist, now. I realize more than I ever did before that anything bad can happen to you at any time.  

After I received my transplant, I think I forgot about that. I thought my "hard thing"--my trial--was behind me.  That way of thinking is selfish and immature.

But every once in a while, I hear myself whisper: "Anything good can happen to you at any time."  

And I guess that's just it isn't it.  Anything--good or bad--can happen to you at anytime.  Maybe hope is just simply...accepting that. Accepting that we are going to be sad, angry, pissed off, and we are going to lose things in life. No matter how much hope or confidence we have about an outcome. 

I accept that. I accept that there are things and events, even people, that I have absolutely no control over. I accept that a bad thing could happen to me or to someone I love right fucking now.  

But maybe...a good thing will happen, too. 

Nowadays, I find myself smiling about those "hopeful maybes" a lot more often. It's strange and foreign to me because I wasn't doing it for so long.  And I'm vulnerable. I hated being in a position of clinging so tightly to the positive outcome of a situation that when it was eventually ripped away, it took pieces of me with it.  

Phrases that I have written down in my phone, that I read often to keep me in check:  Nothing is promised.  Tomorrow isn't guaranteed. God doesn't owe me anything.  

But even with all the infinite possibilities of how a situation could go wrong, one fact will always remain, until this Earth finally blows up from global warming:  there are infinite possibilities of how a situation could go right, too.  

Who knows. I'm no scientist and y'all all know that I'm effing terrible at math.  Those possibilities might not be so infinite.  Maybe.

**This post is filled with pictures of times when something good happened to me.  The picture above is of Nationals Park, our local baseball stadium.  Ben and I went to the game on the first sunny day in D.C. following 15 days of rain.**