Are you hopeful?
A sequence of thoughts worth preserving:
I feel like I’m being prepared piece by piece for change and greater responsibility. Consolidating my affairs, shifting my mindset internally, laser focused on elevating my career so that I can elevate my wealth and value in this community. I feel it. It’s weird to explain. But its easier for me to say ‘no’ now. It’s easier for me to protect my heart and open it just to those that cherish it. I prioritize my efforts emotionally different. It’s all a work in progress but I’m hopeful about it all.
Hope. It’s one of my greatest tools against anxiety, insecurity, and uncertainty. I lean on hope like a physical structure in my life, erected from the bottom of my heart and of the purest and most resilient material. Sometimes I’m so close to hope I have to look up to see all its majesty. Sometimes when I’m low or in the trenches I have to squint my eyes through the tears to make out it’s tall structure. Arms stretched out wide I swing for it blindly unable to grasp it and hungry for its clarity and majestic scale.
Whether high or low or somewhere in the grey the one thing that stays the same is my knowledge that hope is there, whether I can see it, feel it, or harness it, I never doubted its presence.
I can specifically recount every page turning experience in my life where I have been the closest to hope, this towering totem in my life.
I felt an overwhelming energy mobilize into my body bloating every nook and cranny of my being.
So full I could float
So full I could glide
So full I had no room for anger, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.
One particular memory comes to mind when I was counting down the days until I was off the cruise ship. I was on duty outside of a dining room with my camera a safe distance away from a co-worker so that we could talk while still looking busy, lol. He asked if I was going to renew my contract. By that point I was more than half way done with my current contract and already decided the first would be my last. I replied and said no I’m not. His eyes got wide and said wow, what will you do when you go shore side? I looked at him and with a smile I said, I have no idea. He looked at me like I was crazy, like real crazy and asked a bunch of follow up questions I also had no answer to. In his mind I was about to be assed-out and out of work. I told him I’m not worried and that it will all work out. I was ecstatic for a place, scenario, and blessing in which I had no knowledge of.
But to him I seemed crazy. Crazy, like when they say you’re crazy in love. Crazy like when you say things that don’t make sense. I didn’t feel crazy but even recalling this memory I am laughing to myself because everything I said was honest and true. I had no idea what was next. What I did know was that the ship was not it. I knew something was being prepared for me.
I’ve had several key moments in my life like that, where God made clear to me that something phenomenal was coming. I refer to those moments as the page turning, chapter markers in my life. Full of hope and unbothered.
Last December I lost that hope and struggled to travel near hope again.
December of 2019 I was thrown a thousand miles away from my majestic pillar of hope. Left in a fog, stuck in despair, and drunken by my misfortunes and misunderstandings. My tracks were swept up by the wind. My senses stolen and withheld. With no mode of travel to hope I found myself sinking in sand.
It took me 5 months to draw near to my pillar of hope again. Like the slowest sunrise to warm the ice covered Earth I drew closer and its presence began to fill me gradually and slowly. I’m not yet bending back and over to look up at hope. But I’m close enough to feel its energy and feel it trying to fill me and fill the spaces and mend the damage that was done. But hope is there. Hope is near. And hope is teaching me new lessons this year.
Now as I stretch toward hope I feel hope stretch back toward me. Not waiting for me to arrive hope is growing and seeking me and it’s humble efforts encourage me.
