CARRYING HOPE {why I'm not an optimist}

"even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."

Here I am again.  I don’t write so much because I want to, but because I have to.  The voices in my head won’t shut up.

Hope.

I can’t shake it.  I can’t get it out of my head.  You might say I’m holding onto hope; I’d say Hope is holding onto me.  But I’m ahead of myself here.  {rewind…}

In recent years, I’ve often been told that I’m a joyful person.  I don’t know whether or not that’s true.  I should like it to be true, because joy is one of the loveliest things I’ve encountered this side of heaven.  It’s certainly my aim to be joyful, but I fall so unbelievably short.  Sometimes I see the cup half-empty, other times half-full.  But I suppose I should saying: “My cup overflows.” (Psalm 23:5)

I’d like to be called ‘joyful one.’    But there’s one thing I’m sure of:  I am not an optimist.  I just get tangled up in all that silver lining.  I stare hard in the mirror now and the face looking back at me is hardly what I’d call a happy one.   It’s more like a tired one. 

And I am tired.  I’m tired of all the yesterdays we hold onto, the ugliness we create today, and the tomorrow’s we live in fear of meeting.  This business of living isn’t easy.  I’m so desperately weary of the horror and brutality, the terrorism, addiction, hunger, poverty, war.  I’m tired of the nodded heads masking unchanged lives.  I’m tired of fights about everything, and everything about fights.  I’m tired of the bitterness we chew on that silently eats us alive.  And I’m so tired of days in bed and illness, of families torn apart, of worst fears actualized, of the empty look in people’s lost eyes, of watching neglected kids walk home alone in the dark, of hearing the ugliest curse words in every other sentence, of suffering and watching others suffer.  No, I’m surely no optimist. 

The optimist looks at a black, billowy mass of storm cloud and says:

“It’s really not as bad as it looks.”

“Don’t worry; it can’t do much harm.”

“Everything will be okay.  It’ll pass over and be gone soon.”

Thank God for optimists.  We need them to give us hope, to strengthen us for that moment when our courage fails us.  Some of the most encouraging people I know are optimists and I dearly love them.  But I am not an optimist.

“It’s really not as bad as it looks.”  Oh, isn’t it?  Maybe it is as bad as it looks, or even worse.  A tremendous storm is coming.  It’ll be dark and ferocious. 

“Don’t worry; it can’t do much harm.”  Oh, can’t it?  The wind will tear the roofs off houses and barns.  The flood waters will topple trees and power lines and will carry away homes and cars.  It will be hard.

“Everything will be okay.”  But it won’t.  Sometimes things are genuinely not okay.  When the skies unleash their monstrous power, people and animals will die & a great deal will be lost and destroyed in the storm.  Sometimes things are bad and sometimes they’re going to get worse. 

“It’ll pass over and be gone soon.”  But perhaps it won’t pass over right away.  Maybe it’ll be dark and stormy for a while.  Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned right here in the eye of the storm.

But I’ll tell you something.  We can still have joy.  And hope.  We’ve so deeply intertwined joy and optimism that we’ve come to see them as one and the same.  And yes, they often do go together beautifully—but they aren’t always found hand-in-hand. 

Joy isn’t blind to the reality of the coming storm and all that it will bring.  It doesn’t stand there blinking to see if the clouds will vanish.  Joy sees the storm for all it is worth and all it is capable of.  But when the darkness comes, joy stares the storm cloud in the face and thanks God for the rain. 

I want that kind of joy.  When I hear the thunder rumble and watch lightening split the sky, I want to stand in awe of the power of God.  I want to hear His still, small voice in the wind.  I want to TRUST HIM.  The rain will come.   My life is mostly rain, and it usually seems to catch me without an umbrella.  But let it come!  Yes, the storm brings destructive winds and darkness and floodwaters.  But it also brings refreshment to the parched, weary soil.  It softens the hard, cold ground and breathes new life into the earth.  It blows away the dead leaves and washes the dirt down the gutter.  It cleanses, making things new—and green again.  The storm makes the world more beautiful.  And taking notice of that beauty—that’s joy. 

So yes, the pain will come.  Hard days are real.  Sometimes things are not okay.  Suffering and death and darkness are present on planet earth while we eagerly await His return.  Jesus even promised us we’d have suffering and tribulation in this world, and He wasn’t kidding.  But He also promised that:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.  When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” (Isaiah 43:2)

So maybe I don’t have to look at the storms and say: “Yay!  Everything is great and the sun is shining!” – when it’s not.  But maybe instead, I can (and should) look at the storm for both the good and the bad it will bring and thank God that even the darkest storm is full of His love and healing power. 

My friend/sister recently said something that has stuck with me: “Being grateful for the good things doesn’t mean I should ignore the bad things; it just means I’m not giving the bad things more attention than they deserve.  Joy is real, pain is real, but joy is eternal and wins out in the end.”  What a promise!  What HOPE!

Optimists seem to have a gift for giving hope.  It’s usually hope for things – hope that the storm won’t be too bad, hope that it’ll be over soon, hope for a brighter tomorrow.  But joy looks on tempests and smiles, recognizing the wrath of the coming storm yet seeing and praising God for all the good He will bring from it because He loves us.  We can have hope looking forward to Home – ten thousand years and then forevermore.  But we can have hope now, too – enough for today.  Joy is not only about having hope FOR something.   It’s about just carrying hope.  I want to carry hope inside myself.  My deepest hope is not for something, really.  It’s in something.  Actually, in Someone.  Someone Whose name is Hope.
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The lyrics to my first-ever choir solo as a little girl have stuck with me all these years:

Call it what you will
I call it rain—
when troubles come and pat against my soul.
Go in if you like
but I will remain
and let the washing waters make me whole.

Just when I’m sure that I can’t bear the rain,
a tiny leaf starts pushing through the ground.
In a place where the ground was too dry to sustain it,
a new tiny flower can be found.

And I feel Him in the rain

and I see Him once again
and the flowers come to show
that all that rain was helping me to grow.