Crazy Hope

Crazy Hope

I am cautious with hope. I always have been. My heart leaps to it quickly, but my head says, “Careful there, missy. That hope you’re fooling with is dangerous stuff. You don’t want to get hurt or look foolish, do you?” I don’t. And because my head can argue longer (and louder) than my heart, I’ve spent a lifetime carefully reigning in my hope—and I’ve done a pretty good job of it.

Even so, my heart still sometimes gets the best of me.

I’ve fallen off the functional stoic’s wagon a time or two of late. I’ve hoped, and I haven’t exactly hoped in secret, either. And sure enough, I’ve been disappointed—and even a little ashamed that I didn’t manage my longings with a firmer hand.

Creative projects that looked promising at first didn’t pan out in the end, and I feel silly that I actually believed they would. Fledgling friendships that seemed they might flutter and take wing have fallen with a tiny thud. And the old, familiar things I’ve counted on in the past to comfort me simply haven’t, and don’t much anymore.

I’ve dared my heart enough to hope, and it seems that hope is having the last laugh. The modest home I hoped I might buy, I can’t. The numbers don’t quite add up. (While “self-employed” is a wonderful, unpredictable, faith-stretching way to live, it apparently fails to impress the mortgage lenders.) And the elegant dress I did buy for an anticipated celebratory event was never worn; I returned the purchase, tags still attached, handing it and the receipt to a quizzical clerk with a shrug and a quiet “Didn’t work,” although the dress itself worked just fine.

Hope is not for the fainthearted. It requires no small amount of bravery to keep at it and to risk disappointment. But even when I doubt the wisdom of cracking my heart open one more time for anything at all, I know I surely will. I will because the opposite of a hopeful heart is a hardened one, and that would be the death of me.

And I will because my truer-than-true Father holds every crazy hope of mine. He bids me come and ask again, and he never makes me ashamed for having done so, whether his answer hurts or heals.

Hope does not disappoint.

Romans 5:5, NASB