About Hope

The nature of hope

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of ‘hope’ recently. What is it, where does it come from, and why does it matter so much?

Hope is so important. But I don’t think I really understood the nature of hope until recurrent miscarriage became a part of my story.

These days I think we often use the word ‘hope’ interchangeably with ‘wish’ or ‘want’, and as a result we’ve diluted it’s meaning somewhat:

‘What are you hoping for this Christmas?’ we ask. Or we say things like, ‘I really hope it doesn’t rain later’ as a passing remark.

But the truth is that hope is not a warm fuzzy feeling, or just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. And its not even just having a positive mindset, or wishing for something good to happen either.

Real and lasting hope is a much more gritty and hard-earned thing.

Hope is…

In preparing for this blog, I put out this question to my readers: ‘What is hope to you?’

Here’s a few of the answers I got in response:

‘Hope is… looking for the beauty (no matter how small it may seem) in every circumstance’

‘Hope is… the courage to seek joy in the face of sorrow’

‘Hope is… the confidence to keep looking forwards’

‘Hope is… placing my faith in something good and certain’

‘Hope is… an assurance, a place to rest my soul’

‘Hope is… defiantly looking for glimpses of goodness in spite of the pain’

‘Hope is… a confidence expectation in God’s faithfulness’

‘Hope is… something that sustains’

‘Hope is… the rock solid assurance that comes from being in relationship with God’

All great definitions, but I was especially happy to notice a single, golden thread running through them all; there’s a sense of grit and determination, either stated or implied.

Hope vs disappointment

Hope isn’t something we discover to make life easy, it’s something we choose when life gets hard.

So in that sense, hope really isn’t something we possess until we need it.

In fact, I’d actually go so far as to say that hope grows from the soil of disappointment: because it’s only when life leaves us feeling broken or short-changed, that we have to choose to bravely employ hope.

Romans 5:5 says that ‘hope does not disappoint us, or put us to shame’ but sometimes when we hope for something, disappointment still follows.

But I hoped and prayed and longed for a better pregnancy outcome three times, and three times I was left facing more loss. So yes, hope does sometimes disappoint us - in fact sometimes, it leaves us completely crushed.

And what do we do then? Well, I sought lots of difference advice from different sources, but most of it really just boiled down to this: Hope more. Hope harder. Hope again.

Hope matters

It can be really hard to choose to hope for good things again, when hope has already left you disappointed before. But at the same time - what’s the alternative?

This is why hope matters so much. If we let go of hope, we let go of everything. I guess that’s where the grit and determined part of hope comes in…

But it’s also often been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. And yet unfortunately, that’s exactly what recurrent miscarriage became like for me.

You lost a pregnancy? Try again.

You lost another? Try again.

It happened again? Well, try again…

Sometimes you really do have no other option that to keep choosing hope over and over again, but sometimes that fresh hope is born from adjusting our expectations slightly or finding new things to place our hope in.

As an example, here’s just a few of the sources of hope I tried to lean on during that time:

Hoping for better luck
Hoping that statistical odds would eventually be in my favour
Hoping that blood tests would offer some answers
Hoping that doctors would find me a cure
Hoping that praying harder would get me a better outcome
Hoping that my spiritual commitment could twist God’s arm
Hoping that friends’ successes were a good sign for me
Hoping that a slightly different drug combo would make the difference
Hoping that dietary changes would do what medicine could not

All of these things we ultimately about trying or hoping harder in some way, but it turned out that ‘more’ hope was not what I needed…

The object of our hope

What I have learned about hope is this:

It’s the object of our hope - not the quantity of our hope - that really matters the most. You can hope as hard as you like, but that in itself doesn’t change anything except how hard you fall when your hope is left disappointed again.

You see, I need a hope that I can really count on - not one that comes and goes with my circumstances or situation. And however hard things might be today, I need to know that there’s still hope ahead…

Maybe that’s why I find myself reaching out for God at a time when so many people say that in my position, they would have been tempted to walk away…

Hope that matters

Romans 15:13 says this: “May the God of all hope fill you with joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you might overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”

But what is this hope in God really? And what does it really offer of any substance?

Maybe like me, you have been left feeling disappointed that what you hoped for the most hasn’t materialised. And maybe it even feels like a bit of a ‘cop out’ or poor consolation prize to say that you’re placing you hope in eternity instead.

“I may not get the chance to hold all my babies here on earth, but at least I will some day in heaven…”

But the truth could not be more different. It’s not actually a cop-out at all; that decision to place your confidence in what is unseen is the real, deep, gritty substance of hope. The kind of hope that saves.

And if you don’t believe me, just look at Hebrews 11, often known as the Bible’s ‘hall of fame’. Because the passage goes onto highlight a long list of great heroes of the faith. And yet, even though each was commended for their faith, none of them received what they hoped for. Not. a. single. one. At least not in this lifetime, anyway.

So if you sometimes find yourself feeling disappointed that your hope hasn’t materialised either, you are in good company!

But that’s not all. The passage also goes onto to say that God had something better planned. A glorious future inheritance. Something even better than them receiving all that they hoped for or were promised here on earth.

It’s hard to conceive of how that could be, isn’t it?

And when I look at my own pain, it’s really hard to conceive of any better ending to my story than the one I wanted, the one where I get to hold all my babies here and now…

Sometimes it’s hard to even comprehend all things being made perfect in eternity, from our current vantage point.

But then again, who wants a God who’s ways are small enough to fully understand & explain & know?