Hope Shines Through

During my weekly call with my spiritual advisor, we were discussing the “assignment” she gave last week of awareness and discovering who I am. I told her I couldn’t give her a complete or definitive answer about who I was but I felt like I realized an important part of who I was. We talked about my last blog regarding choices, hope, and capacity for love. The lady asks tough questions with soul-provoking answers. What part of me loves? How do I quantify the capacity for love? What is hope?

I believe my heart loves. I believe everyone loves from the heart, we just have different capacities for how the love is expressed. Some of us are limited in how we love. I know I was for a long time and maybe I will continue to be. I don’t know if I can quantify my capacity for love. I just know it changes and grows with lessons. Some lessons involve cracking my heart wide open to make room for pain, understanding, forgiveness, freedom and more love. An experience which does NOT feel so great when it transpires but in the end is worth it. Some lessons are shown and illustrated by others who’ve learned how to successfully love in relationships. The love and capacity for love discussion went well, she understood what I was explaining.

Hope: 1. a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. 2. (archaic) a feeling of trust.

We struggled with hope because she had the first definition of hope in mind and kept asking me what was I hoping for. I had the second definition in mind, without even knowing it. I told her that my choices reflecting hope aren’t always about hoping for a specific outcome or answer. It’s being open to possibility, to allowing from a place of optimism as opposed to certainty, rigidity or pessimism. She had some trouble understanding my perspective so she asked me to give an example of how would I respond to a specific “uncomfortable” situation based on hope. I told her I’ve learned to breathe and if at all possible find humor or understanding in the situation. Many times I’m often able to find both, which eases the need to force or fix the “uncomfortable” situation. The choice/response to the situation is more about trusting my path and the process that brought me to this place. Sometimes I do try to force or fix it, but I almost always pull back now, before much, if any damage is done. That’s hope for me and I wasn’t sure if I was getting it across to her but she got it when I put it like that.

This is foremost in my heart and mind because I have someone in my life who is struggling right now. He is in a dark, despairing place that scares me because I know that place. It sucks to be where it feels as if there is no air, no light, no hope and it won’t ever end. I’ve reached out to tell him what has helped me to move out of that space in the past, but the truth is that may not work for him. We each have to find our way through that darkness, that seemingly endless night. No matter who loves us and reaches out to us, we have to take responsibility for reaching back. That is not an easy thing to do when in that place.

I told him if he can make it through the night there’s a brighter day. It’s a line from Tupac Shakur’s Dear Mama that hits me in the feels every time I listen to that song and hear him rap that specific phrase. I’ve made it through many, many times and I know it to be true. When we make it through the darkness, there is always light. Every time, we just have to trust.