For five years I held on to hope and faith concerning a specific life changing event, which, to my hurt and disappointment, did not work out. So it led me to question hope, but as I started my research on that I ended up finding that my question was more on the issue of faith.
So what exactly am I talking about? Let’s first define these terms to get a bit of clarity. The Oxford English Dictionary defines hope as a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen; and it defines faith as complete trust or confidence. So with this context, for those five years of my life I had the expectation and desire that things would have worked out, and I had complete confidence that it would.
At first I became angry with “hope” when things didn’t work out. I was angry that I had expected a positive outcome, and so I asked myself the question, “what if we relied less on hope?” I started to think of the many situations where we apply the concept of hope, such as when we tell a friend “I hope you will have a good day”, or “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.” I laughed as I considered these statements, and thought to myself, we have absolutely no control over the weather, and most of the time when we “hope” that others will have a good day, we won’t impact those persons’ day and have no control over what obstacles those persons’ may experience on that day, but being the humans that we are, we “hope” anyway. I laughed as I considered how at work we tend to start off the body of our emails with “Hope you are well”. Me having hope about a client’s health is not going to impact whatever is the reality, yet I “hope” anyway. In all these questions something became evident to me. Two things in fact – faith and fate. I kept seeing the answers can’t change the outcome; different to reality, and I thought, oh so fate is a big part of my unfortunate setbacks. I realized that there is little escaping “hope” because one way or another you have to have expectations and desires in this life, even if at the very least it is that you will wake up the next morning. Or on the contrary, for those who don’t want to wake up, they could have a desire to die! I further realized that for those five years I had not only hoped, but had held on to “faith”. I trusted completely that things would have worked out as I had planned, so I did not make adequate preparation for Plan B, in case things did not work out. To be honest, I was the kind of person who always had so much faith that I thought that it was all I needed in order to achieve whatever I wanted. But this setback reminded me of something. It reminded me that God is in control, and not me. While faith is good, it is even better to be conscious of our limitations. This is where fate comes in. The Oxford English Dictionary defines fate as the development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as decided in advance by a supernatural power.
So my setback helped me to realise that all along my faith had been misdirected. I needed to put my faith in God, and accept that I do not have complete control over my circumstances, and as such will not receive every desire I have in this life. Now I still hope, but while I do I pray and ask God for His guidance. I no longer lean on my own understanding, but trust that God knows what is best for me, and whatever that best is, I choose to accept it. When he closes a door on me I know it’s because it’s not His will for me, and I accept that and patiently wait for His will to be done in my life.
whatifsometimeslifehappen 