“Hope always breaks my heart. And yet hope always restores my soul.”
One of the difficulties of any endeavor is that there is just no guarantee of success. A journey is not like a recipe, where, if you put in the right ingredients at the right time, mix it in the right way, and bake it for the right amount of time, you’ll get, barring any spectacular issues, the thing that you expected. A cake recipe makes a cake, a pie recipe makes a pie, a cashew chicken recipe makes a decent plate of food for a dinner, a dinner that I’m eating right now.
The journey, tho? No guarantees of success. Not even any guarantees that the journey will have well-marked signs and well-lit pathways. With our wit and our tools and our commitment, we set out. If you’re like me, you think that those are all that you need.
What you also fail to remember, if you’re like me, is that you bring along your self, the quiddity of personality, the hard borders of character, the motivation of belief—and hope. The hope that you will succeed.
That hope is going to fail you, because you are going to fail. You think that hope will carry you along, but hope will break your heart when you reach the stubborn end of things, the hurts and wounds in others, the lack of energy and vision, and the realization that with all your efforts and all you strengths and all you energies directed into the journey—it is so, so hard to get to the next point. Because you are always there, muddling things and interrupting things, making excuses and avoiding repentance.
Hope will disappoint. Hope is friend who’s there for the daytime and there for the fun. Hope is gone when it gets dark and tough and you’re alone.
It’s Lent, y’all and I’m thinking about how so much of my efforts have not sustained me beyond my own beliefs and my own commitments. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” Yeah, I will, as long as it doesn’t take everything. I’m thinking of the many times I have given my word and have failed to live up to that word. I’m thinking of the many times I have proceeded in ignorance and have not noticed how that ignorance has excluded others and erased others and wounded others.
I’ve repented, over and over, and still I continue in my old ways. They are familiar and comforting, even through I know they will stop my journey.
What keeps me going is hope, the restorer of my soul. My hope burns in me, into the repentance, past it into grace, and re-energizes me. Hope tells me that it is never too late. It is never really empty. It is never completely gone. It is not entirely dark.
I’m going to continue the journey. I have a lot of “I can’ts” in my life right now, but what I don’t have is any “I won’ts.”
This is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and I wore the ashes today as a reminder that we are made of stars and dust, and we will return to dust. But I believe that we will see the stars before we die.