Hope That Survives Contact With Reality

I have been handed a great deal of optimism over the years, most of it well meant. Optimism is a prediction. It says this will work out. When it does not, optimism has nothing left to offer, and the person holding it often feels foolish on top of everything else.

Hope makes a smaller and sturdier claim. It says there is something on the other side of this worth walking toward, even if I cannot see it and even if the outcome is not the one I asked for.

The most helpful thing anyone said to me during treatment was not a promise. It was a woman who said she would drive my kids on Thursdays until further notice, and then did it for eleven months. The least helpful things were the assurances that everything happens for a reason.

Faith communities have an extraordinary capacity for the first and a persistent temptation toward the second. Choosing presence requires tolerating the discomfort of not resolving someone's situation.

You are not failing at faith because you are struggling. The people I know with the most durable belief are not the ones who avoided hard seasons. They are the ones who were honest during them.