So often, in my intentional hope, I get discouraged. Why? Because sometimes, I encounter what feels like repeated setbacks and let downs. I usually brace for the lows whenever there is a high point. Some of that is because I know when I have a victory, my body naturally produces all of those “happy” hormones, and if the sensation of that victory lasts long enough, I have a lot more of those unusually “happy” hormones. But at some point, the high of the last victory will wear off. If I don’t brace myself, not only will I crash, but I too often burn, badly. Almost like the high of drugs and alcohol. Often times people get high to escape the “pain”, but the more you do it, the “higher” you need to be in order to escape. The more of the substance a person abuses, the more the effects of that substance become visible. For me, being hopeful even in the darkest, most impossible situations, creates a space where I can escape the “reality” of what I see, and imagine the desires of my heart.
So in my hopeful place, things work out for me. All those things that on paper seem hard, to expensive, to time-consuming, or down right impossible, HAPPEN. Because I struggle with depression and anxiety, my first instinct is to list the cons of every situation and establish “legitimate” reasons why something could never happen. So can you imagine the moment I realize one of the things from my hopeful place actually happened. It worked out as planned. This thing went off without a hitch. Here come all of my “happy” hormones, doing their job. Making me happy. For example, I hosted my first Mental Health Conference earlier this year, and the feedback was amazing. For almost 6 weeks, I would continually get feedback about it, or someone would ask me how it went. I could almost equate the feeling of a successful conference with the birth of my children, for the sake of this blog… we will leave it at that. After about a month of the feedback, obviously, people moved on, and the conversations about it dwindled. (That is totally okay. No reason anyone should feel the need to list your lifetime of accomplished when they talk to you.) However, as it happened, I started to feel some extreme fluctuations in my moods. I am overly diligent about my awareness of my emotional state, so I took some precautions to keep from falling too low too fast. I found a few bible plans on encouragement. I reached out to my circle to let them know how I was feeling, and I started using my journal more frequently. I also used positive affirmations. But then, one day, I had a bad day. Nothing went my way. I crashed and almost burned.
What went wrong was never anything that I had thought about in my hopeful place, but it caused me to lose sight of it. I was working very hard to build this website at the time, and had set a few deadlines for it, ALL of them were missed. I started to allow myself to believe that it would never happened, that it was crazy to even believe I could do this. i became discouraged. I wanted to give up, just let the idea go all together. But I kept working, set new deadlines, and hoped for the best.
No Hopeful and Discouraged are not mutually exclusive, you can be both a the same time. They can co-exist in the same thought pattern, in the same mind, in the same heart, in the same person. You can be discouraged and hopeful at the same time. I have been there. I have been so frustrated with work some days that I just wanted to turn in my resignation and find another job because there was no way these people understood how I was feeling. I can recall being so extremely discouraged with how I felt I was performing on my job that it was a focal point in my fasting and prayer time. I kept my head down and worked harder than usual and with a matter of time, I was called in to the boss’s office and given a stellar informal performance review and placed on track for promotion in the near future. I was discouraged, but hopeful the situation would turn around.
I co-parent with my father and my step-mother. Not an ideal situation AT ALL! In fact, at times, it sucks. I am often discouraged in regard to resuming 100% of my parenting responsibilities in the near future. So often we disagree over how to handle situations with the children, I feel left-out of important decisions, and undermined when I make a decision without them. This is a struggle beyond anything you can imagine. My children went to live with them after a series of set-backs, and it was the best decision for the two most important people involved, my children. I always play out scenarios and conversations we should have to make things easier, to redeem a level of mutual respect and show my children that we are able to work together for their good. Yes I am hopeful that we can do this. But I also get discouraged with every failed attempt at it.
My hopeful place keeps me going; it motivates me in times of discouragement. I hold onto it like a lifesaver. During times of storms, I hold onto it as tightly as possible, while I wait on the Lord to calm the rough waters. During the good times, it’s a float, allowing me to drift down a lazy river, carefree and basking in the Glory of the Creator.
Are you discouraged right now? Find a hopeful space in your mind. What does your hopeful heart desire? Meditate on that, be prayerful over it. Never let that go.
