The Problem With Hope

Twenty six years together provides a sense of another person which borders on extrasensory. I can instantly judge her mood, spot the nuance in a word, tone of voice, body language.

Lately she has been trying to show me she can be kind, caring, that we may be able to work things out.

But between the moments of slightly forced reassurances I see the troubled waters sliding beneath.

I simply don’t trust her.

I think she has awakened to my emotional condition, that I am fragile, barely hanging on. I think she is a little worried as it occurs to her that my preoccupation with our marriage, my concern for her and our children, my difficulty in sleeping, may cause me to not be the best I can be as a teacher. She is beginning to see that the complexities of instruction, class management, dealing with the shifting patterns in the hearts and minds of adolescent children requires the best from me, and it is hard to provide that when I am thinking about the icebergs grinding against the hull of our marriage.

Today we have another counseling session. We need to go. We need to make progress, keeping moving, even if the movement is very small.

I feel almost like giving up.

I can’t do that of course. I want to help her heal. Help her through her alcohol dependancy treatments. Help her work through counseling that will help her heal from the hurts of her life. I have to hang in there.

I have set up clear boundaries, that she is not to have contact with that other man. I suspect that last Thursday she broke that agreement. I pretended to believe her account of where she had been.

Since then I believe she has been too busy to break that agreement. And, she has started treatment which is a part of the road to her recovery.

So, the past few days have been hopeful. The other day she has said things about our future which makes it look like she her heart is changing.

There is a problem with hope.

In hope lies risk. Especially when the hope is dependent on someone else, on circumstances beyond one’s control.

In hoping that things are going better I am riding a roller coaster to the peak of another hill. It is a fine view from up there. I can see farther, see a future where things look promising.

I have trouble believing I will stay up there long.

I recognize that I am thinking, writing, from a place of exhaustion, that I am not getting enough sleep, enough rest, and that I am shaking inside as much as my hands sometimes tremble late at night.

I recognize that I am probably clinically depressed, that my body is not producing the chemicals, seratonin, that I need to feel better about myself, about life.

Hope is a good emotion. It lifts us up when things look dark. All good things come from God.

Or... that is the way it is supposed to be.

We can put hope in anything. We can hope we do well in a job interview. We can hope our favorite sports team will win. We can hope for a good draw in a game of poker, hope the right ping pong balls pop into the tube of the lottery machine, that someone who holds our heart will prove trustworthy.

Those are thin, poorly chosen hopes. They are based on chance, on circumstances beyond our control, on the moods and choices of another.

Those aren’t valid hopes.

We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. --1 Chronicles 29:15

And we know it. Sometimes, perhaps often, we try to stack the deck, ask God to intervene...

"Oh, that I might have my request,
that God would grant what I hope for,
that God would be willing to crush me,
to let loose his hand and cut me off!”
--Job 6:8-9

I’m not so desperate that I pray God would remove me from this world as Job did, I have too much to do, I have children to care for... still, I deeply understand the urge to beg things of God. Indeed, we are to take our requests to Him.

Part of me rejects this. Such rejection would eliminate much good, much opportunity for my Lord to work in my life, but I often feel I should just suck it up, and bear what burdens are placed on my back, and trudge on.

Part of me wants to simply speak to God about how I am doing, what I am grateful for, seek to know what He would have me do. I don’t want to use Him as a vending machine, seeking He grant large, and even more so the small, things in my life.

I fear the urge to think of Him, the Creator of all things, my Maker, as a puppet who’s strings I might attempt to pull.

My hope should be beyond such concerns. I would like to have instead, to hold dear to me, the hope Paul wrote of to the Believers in Rome:

“Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” --Romans 5:3-5

I want hope that is simply based on Him. He is bigger than my problems. His love is mightier than my entire existence.

“His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;
the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.
Extol the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion...”
--Psalm 147:10-12

That is what I want to do... simply love him, hope in Him.

That is what we are all to do, even governments, nations:

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory.

In his name the nations will put their hope."
--Matthew 12:20-22

But I’m a silly man, a small person who feels like he has clung to his life as best he could and feels he cannot cling to this bit of flotsam for much longer.

I hope Brenda does the right thing. I hope my marriage survives.

I’m such an idiot.