Right now I'm staring at a water color painting that my roommate has hanging on the wall. The painting is of an assortment of exactly 21 glasses of water, each with a different amount of liquid. Though the art in of itself is aesthetically pleasing to look at, it's the small phrase on the bottom of the painting that hits me: "hope is essential".
Everyone and their sister has written about hope before. In some shape or form. I definitely have. Yet it's a subject I continually want to revisit because I'm constantly in desperate need of hope.
We are all in desperate need of hope.
Hope is, in fact, essential.
2012-2015 were highlight years for me. I was constantly around faith driven believers during this time who had a heart to see the nations transformed by a radical Love named Jesus Christ. I lived in both California and Hawaii and traveled to do various missions work overseas.
Flash forward to February 2017, and I am now working as a printing technician for a copy services company in a small town in Maryland.
Each day feels like a new area of growth for me. In the places I felt I couldn't confront, or the issues that I tried to ignore about myself before, I'm finally facing it. It's painful.
Oh and being in a relationship doesn't fix your problems. Just as a heads up. It actually brings out those issues you have in your heart even more and makes you realize what a broken and imperfect person you are. If you're looking for a humility check, a relationship may be right for you!
Yet in the midst of all this pain and brokenness, I cling to hope. I cling because I know my story's not done yet. It doesn't end here with me working at a copy services company in Fulton, Maryland. But yet, this season is still part of my story. This time of (seemingly) insignificant day after day is truly a time in which, if I look hard enough, I find magic and wonder. In both people and life around me. Mainly people though.
I read somewhere recently that pain puts us in good Company. I can't think of something I agree with more. My broken heartedness has made me into a better and more real person. I feel closer to my Creator in the times of pain. I'm glad life sucks sometimes, for that very reason!
I love that cliche graphic that's been going around from the book, the Valveteen Rabbit. I'm just gonna go ahead and show you:
And that, my friends, is why hope is essential.
Because through those really hard days when you don't want to get out of bed because it just hurts too much to face the day, and though you might not want to do anything with your Saturday other than
watch movies to numb your pain, and maybe you spent your lunch break crying in your car and not wanting to go back to work, rest assured knowing that those days aren't the end of your story. Those days aren't the end of your hope.
watch movies to numb your pain, and maybe you spent your lunch break crying in your car and not wanting to go back to work, rest assured knowing that those days aren't the end of your story. Those days aren't the end of your hope.
Those days are forming you into a more real version of yourself.
