10,000 Reasons

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I've never lost hope down some rabbit hole.
Honestly? I’ve lost hope looking into reflections in mirrors when all I could recognize was myself.
 
I’ve lost hope looking straight into my own eyes and feeling like there’s no way out of my own skin, out of my past, out of my own tattered story, no way to rip out the smeared and ugly pages of such a story.
 
I thought I lost hope when life tore a hole in the back pocket of my heart, and my creased and worn-out hope fell out when the bottom of things fell out — you know...when the door clicked close for the last time.  When that email landed and kicked hard right in the gut.  When the doctor shook his head slow and the room kinda spun, when too many mattering things felt impossibly wrecked, and it’s life that can feel sorta totalled, and how do you keep going on hoping — when it’s the important parts of your life that are write offs?
 
But who knew that folded and creased Hope unfolds into wings?
 
Turns out, we can think we've lost hope, or we can try to shield ourselves from it, abandon it, mock it, guard against it, or try to trash it.
 
But hope is a rising thing and flies to you.
 
No matter where we are — even in the unknown and unfamiliar — Hope is like a homing pigeon that knows how to find its way because it has an inner map and will always wing its way back to you.  You may feel like you’ve lost hope — but Hope never loses track of you.
 
Hope is always coming home to you.

A few weeks ago, we all sat around the living room and talked about Advent and what it means. The word advent comes from the Latin term 'adventus', meaning "arrival" or "coming," particularly the coming of something having great importance. Advent season, then, is both a time of joy-filled, anticipatory celebration of the arrival of Jesus Christ and a preparatory period of repentance, meditation, and penance. There are four candles that symbolize hope, love, joy, and peace. Some denominations consider the fourth candle to mean purity, and most use a fifth candle, called the Christ candle, that is lit on Christmas to remind Christians of the light Jesus brings to the world.
 
Hope is to be the first candle lit at the onset of advent, and I’ve looked long at its reflection in windows and have seen myself in the pane.  And I know I am not alone in this.  When we feel like we've lost hope — the question to ask is, “But where could my hope go?" 
 
Hope in things, and we can lose Hope.
 
Hope in plans, in expectations, in dreams, in outcomes, in jobs, in bank accounts, in medicine, in people, in timelines, and we can lose Hope. Any of those things can wander off, fall through, disappear, evaporate suddenly, maybe taking your Hope with it.
 
We are not meant to find hope in anything in this world, we are meant to lose hope in all the things here.  We don’t hope in anything of this world — we hope in God.  Hope in Jesus and our Hope goes wherever we go, because Jesus goes with us.
 
When I am going through dark days, I strive to keep on going, because Jesus goes along, too, and He is going through whatever I am going through.  Hope only seems lost when we can’t find a way forward.  I find it comforting to know that I don’t necessarily need to know the way forward, because Hope has a map, and Hope has a name, and His name is Jesus — and Jesus is The Way and when He is my way, there is always a way forward.
 
In my heart's imagination, albeit weary some days, I touch the window pane, touch the reflection of face and Advent flame, touch all kinds of pain — and maybe that’s what I feel, how I’m found, how Hope is found... and I can feel Hope’s returning.  Hope is the one constant, because Jesus is constantly with me, good times and bad.  Jesus knows turns we have never heard of, makes roads we wouldn’t have dreamed of, makes miracles happen exactly where we never would have imagined.  
 
There is a reason He is called The Way, The Truth, and The Light...and I find myself whispering the three words that help me break through the darkest days of the year: Hope in God