Hope radiates from her like never-ending sunbeams.
Wow! What a thought. How can I continue to build that kind of hope in my heart and life? How can you?
There was a quote something like this in the children’s audiobook (Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland) that my kids and I have been listening to. It caught my attention and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
That is what I want. I want to be so full of hope that as I am around others, they feel the warmth of the hope radiating like sunbeams from me!
There have been a few times in my life when I felt utterly hopeless. The night that my ex-husband first hit me. The day I realized that my drug abusing spouse had relapsed after being clean for a year.
Your hopeless moments may have looked like mine, or very very different. Both times, despite the depths of the hopelessness, I was able to get up out of my despair, stand again and move forward, each step toward the light of hope.
I can imagine hopelessness looking and feeling like black sticky tar that entangles, weighs down and holds us tight. It can take a lot to get up and out of that mess, but every step, every pull away releases you a little more until you are fully free of the black slimy mess.
How do we pull ourselves out of the depths of sadness and then take it a step further, fill our hearts so full of hope that it just spills forth from us as warm sunbeams?
The way I move toward this is to seek what fills me with hope and then make sure I have more and more of it in my life.
I have 3 main hope builders in my life.
1. Seeing and enjoying amazing beauty in nature.
Viewing a beautiful sunset, a vast canyon laid out before me, or the ocean stretching before me. All these visions remind me how much bigger and more beautiful life is than this one terrible moment I have lived. These images fill me to overflowing with hope.
Therefore, I like to travel. I love to get away from our drudgery and see beautiful places that fill me anew with hope.
2. Noticing the good things my children are learning and doing.
When I see glimpses of love, peace, kindness, and deep insight in my children, I am filled with hope. I feel the bubbling of hope when they do something especially thoughtful or succeed in something.
At these times I sense that my children will be ok, more than ok, despite all we have been through. I am filled with hope that spills out onto them and other struggling mamas.
3. Reading, hearing and speaking truth fill me with hope.
When I hear a song, listen to a podcast, read a Bible verse that speaks the truth, it reminds me of what I can hope in and for. The truth reworks the doubts and anxieties in my mind changing them to hope.
I seek these truths out regularly. If I hear a song that speaks truth to my heart, I listen, again and again, I belt it out when I hear it (even if wildly out of tune!). If I find a podcast or speaker that teaches the truth, I follow what they say. If I find a verse that speaks truth to me, I turn it into a wallpaper on my phone or write it out and put it somewhere I will see it often.
The more I fill my life with these things of hope, the more it becomes my life. A life of hope!
The more I am living a life of hope, the more I can’t keep it from radiating to those around me and becoming a contagious feeling for those I encounter.
How will you fill your heart with more hope this week?
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Previously Published on fablifenow.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
