Practicing Hope
A few weeks ago I was in a session with my own spiritual director, and we talked about hope. I’ve had quite the back-and-forth with hope over the last few years, as Bryan and I walked through more than three years of infertility. I’ve described hope as stubborn, something that just won’t quit or let go of me, even when despair was lurking nearby. And there were certainly moments of despair. Somehow though, even when it felt impossible, I held onto the stubborn hope that someday we’d have children of our own.
After my spiritual direction session ended, I walked away with this question: How exactly do I actually practice hope? What does it look like to live out hope in daily moments? I’ve been pondering these questions for a few weeks, and I thought I’d share some ways that the Lord has helped me to put hope to practice. Clinging to and living out our hope feels like something we all could use right now.
Spiritual Friendship
If ever there has been a time to be grateful for friendships, it’s been in the last five months.
I’ve appreciated all the humorous memes and posts about how 2020 has been one giant dumpster fire of a year, but in all seriousness, these few months have placed our souls, emotions, and closest relationships into a giant pressure cooker.
Still, with so much pressing in and trying to divide us and tear us apart from one another, I’ve found so much gratitude for the deep friendships in my life. Even as we’ve been separated and isolated during lockdowns and quarantines, we've found creative ways to spend time together and maintain connection, and that’s been so beautiful to me. These friends have been messengers of hope, celebrators in our joy as we expect our first child, fellow mourners and lamenters as we all adjust and struggle through so much change and loss. Oh, how we’ve needed them!
So today, I want to invite you to consider how spiritual friendships breathe life into our journeys with Jesus, and how to develop these friendships in your own life.
Sacred Conversations
We are changed as we are known. And when it comes to words and transformation, we are known by what we share and reveal about ourselves. You see, speaking the truth in love isn’t just about the receiver or listener being changed, the one who hears the truth spoken in love—it’s also the one speaking who is changed. Conversations around connection and self-revelation change both the speaker and the listener.
Curt Thompson describes what the process of Romans 12:2 ("be transformed by the renewing of your mind”) looks like from a neuroscience perspective. He unpacks all the different parts of the brain and how they function separately and together, and his conclusion is that as we engage in healthy conversation for the purpose of connection and communion, our neural networks undergo physical changes. Sharing our stories in deep, meaningful conversation in a safe relationship actually creates new neural pathways that can lead to healing and freedom.
We are physically and neurologically changed by sacred conversations. The deep soul-and-spirit change we feel in these conversations is confirmed by the change in our brain chemistry. Words spoken in love have the power to transform every part of who we are—the spiritual, the emotional, the relational, the mental, and the physical. That is extraordinary to me!