Hope Series.
How are you? I’m coming to you this Wednesday night to check in and tell you about a series I’m planning to do over the next four weeks on the subject of hope. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written, actually about a month or so. Sometimes I hit a creative wall and need a break. While in the past, I’d power through, I’m learning to let myself take one. Creative inspiration ebbs and flows, and when it ebbs, well, I know it’s time to sit and listen.
These are crazy times and these are very important times. These are defining moments for us, for our families, our communities, and our world. I’m going to come right out and say it, these are times of incubation, of creativity, of cultivation, if we let them be. Maybe that sounds crazy to you, and all you can think about is the next CDC guideline that will come out today (some moments that’s me too). Still, I want to invite you to take a step back and look at these times a little differently.
When all this started going down, even a couple weeks before it was headline news, I began thinking about what I needed to do to prepare my family. You see, after all, I’ve been through with my kids, I have a nose for a crisis. Good or bad, I start thinking about survival much earlier than most. It’s part good thinking and part PTSD. I have faced terrifying things 100% unprepared, and that is a terrible situation. Never doing that again, if I can help it.
I also started thinking about hope. Yep HOPE. Like, where can it be found? And how can we infuse it into this situation? What have I learned through the crises in my life that can help me weather this? What can I offer to others so they can endure it too? So creation and hope amidst crisis and uncertainty. Those are the things on my mind. And over the next four weeks, I’m going to share my thoughts on these topics. Because they matter, and they are both present and possible amidst the unknown.
My son Blake was asking me a bunch of questions as I was cleaning my house with Lysol last weekend :-) It felt scary to tell my son, who looks to me for certainty, that I don’t have all the answers. I also confidently looked him in the face and said to him that this will be okay. No, I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m not a fortune teller. I don’t know what that will look like. But from where I sit, and from the darkest places I’ve been, I can say that one way or another this too will be okay.
When we use crises and challenging times as an opportunity to grow, we create muscle memory that allows us to weather whatever comes in our lives. The only way is through. We hold onto hope, and we also make good, sometimes hard and inconvenient, decisions. Our collective human spirit us strong and resilient. There is power in our love for each other and our belief in a God whose perspective far outweighs any we have. We find strength in doing our part, helping our neighbor, and caring for our families. It doesn’t mean we aren’t scared. It does mean we are not alone. We are not left for death or disease. I promise you. Hope is alive.
My life tells me that I can go from not just believing in my mind that things will be okay, but knowing in my heart, they will be. Trusting they will be. Hope grounded in trust. Hope can be our reflex. So join me over the next four Sundays as I explore hope. These are defining moments for us, for our families, for our communities, and for our businesses.
Get quiet. Pray, meditate, listen.
Do the right thing.
Stay inside whenever you can.
Look out for your neighbors.
It’s going to be okay.
Hope is alive.
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See you Sunday ❤️
