Melissa Mills is a dear friend and one of the most passionate people I know.  She works tirelessly for justice and speaks the truth in living authentically in her community.  I’m proud to share her essay as the first installment of our “Finding Hope” prompt for this Winter. You can find her personal blog here.

How do I find hope when life is full of disappointment?

“I’m going to walk away now,” I said, my voice cracking.  I turned around and reluctantly, did just that. I hoped he wouldn’t see the tears that burst from my eyes, blurring my vision.  He didn’t. Instead, he got into his car.

And. Drove. Away.  

I was left having to say goodbye yet again to a guy I really liked and all that I could hope was that somehow this year…this hard, awful, amazing, crazy year would be worth it. But I had to choose that hope. It didn’t come naturally.

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“Come awake from sleep, arise. You were dead but come alive. Wake up, wake up, open your eyes. Climb from your brain into delight.” – David Crowder Band , “Come Awake.”

Sometimes after work last year, where I was on the edge of breaking into either tears or song, I would find myself driving west on the 210 when I was supposed to be driving east. Somehow after an hour I would end up at the beach journaling and totally free to just be. These moments would come upon me like flashes of lightning. I would just know it was going to be an amazing sunset and then would drive as fast as I could without getting pulled over: the 210 to the 118 to the 405 where I always held my breath knowing that the traffic could turn on me at any second.  I always ended up in Santa Monica. It wasn’t that it was my favorite beach, it just had the most of my history and in those moments, I needed to be known, even if it was by a place. 

One particular night there was a dazzling sunset and I was soaking it in while reading something I had written. While making a new connection between where I had been and where I was, I knew I needed more than just a journal entry to remember this feeling. I decided to take a picture of myself on my cell phone. I don’t have a smart phone, so this was my feeble attempt, armed only with a crappy phone camera, lens scratched up after jostling around in my purse one too many times.

A guy saw me trying. He knew I needed to capture this moment of my life to remind myself that I was alive. Inside was the me that wanted so badly to get out. The artist. The writer. Trapped but somehow set free in moments like this sunset. He laughed and asked me if I needed help. I awkwardly replied that yes, indeed, my efforts to squeeze both the sunset and my smiling face into frame weren’t working out.  He took a few pictures. And after he left I looked at them and I saw something in my smile that I hadn’t seen in quite awhile.

I was hopeful.

Sometimes I get stuck. Stuck in the world’s expectations. Stuck in my fears of failing. Fears of ending up alone. Wondering why I never “made it” yet, wondering what “making it” really means.  And why everything hasn’t turned out the way that I wanted it to. I have an amazing ability to catastrophize all of my disappointments until they blot out all of the things I have to be thankful for. All of the good and great things about life.  Not just anyone’s life. My life.

When this happens, I have a few choices. Either I can feel sorry for myself or avoid my thoughts and refuse to think about them or I can just stop. Sit still. Know I don’t have it all figured out. And let go. The third choice is the hardest and it takes faith and trust, two things which do not come naturally to me.

How do I find hope? I ask for help to see. Sometimes I feel like I’m blind. I forget so easily. I wonder if this is how elderly people feel. Frustrated with how they can know something so deeply one second and believe it with all of their hearts and then the next they don’t see it, they forget and need to be reminded again.

I recently wrote a blog about looking for love notes. If I’m paying attention, I can find all sorts of ways that God is looking out for me, showing me that He is there.  A song on the radio by my favorite band. A sentence in a book that I really like. A baby playing peekaboo with me at the grocery store while his mom picks out the perfect cucumber.  Getting to watch my friend’s baby take his first unassisted steps. And unplanned sunsets.  I found a bright piece of yellow paper on my car two days after I wrote the blog. It was entitled “A love letter from Your Heavenly Father” and it had all of these truths about how much God loves me. A literal love note!

I find hope when I choose to look for it, when I learn to laugh at my circumstances and believe that while the last year of my life could be a really good reality show with stellar ratings, I know that as a result, I’ve grown into a stronger woman. A woman I’m proud of who doesn’t just feel joyful because she should, but a woman who finds hope and feels joy because to do anything else would be inauthentic.

I still don’t have this hope business all figured out. Even tonight before I wrote this, I caught myself wondering when my life was going to get better. Job woes, money woes, fresh off that last goodbye. But then I took a moment, asked for help, and wrote this. And if I’ve learned anything from this past year I know that hope might just be in tomorrow’s sunset.