Crazy Hope: by Leigh McLeroy: April 4, 2011

I am cautious with hope. I always have been. My heart leaps to it quickly, but my head says "Careful there, missy. That hope you're fooling with is dangerous stuff. You don't want to get hurt or look foolish, now do you?"

I don't. And because my head can argue longer (and louder) than my heart, I've spent a lifetime carefully reigning in my hope--and I've done a pretty darn good job of it.

Even so, my heart still sometimes gets the best of me.

I've fallen off the functional stoic's wagon a time or two of late. I've hoped, and I haven't exactly hoped in secret, either. And sure enough, I've been disappointed--and even a little ashamed that I didn't manage my longings with a firmer hand.

Creative projects that looked promising at first didn't pan out in the end, and I feel silly that I actually believed they would. Fledgling friendships that seemed they might flutter and take wing have fallen with a tiny thud, or worse, simply vaporized--leaving me feeling that I must have imagined what I saw and heard and felt, invented a hope-filled fiction that had no bearing in truth at all. And the old, familiar things I've counted on in the past to comfort me simply haven't, and don't much anymore.

I've dared my heart enough to hope, and it seems that hope is having the last laugh. The modest home I hoped I might buy, I can't. The numbers just don't quite add up. (While "self-employed" is a wonderful, unpredictable, faith-stretching way to live, it apparently fails to impress the mortgage experts.) And the elegant dress I did buy a while back for an anticipated celebratory event was never worn; I returned the purchase, tags still on, handing it and the receipt over to a quizzical clerk with a shrug and a quiet "Didn't work," although the dress itself worked just fine, thanks.

Hope is not for the faint-hearted. It requires no small amount of bravery to keep at it, and to risk disappointment. But even when I doubt the wisdom of cracking my heart open one more time for anything at all, I know I surely will. I will because the opposite of a hopeful heart is a hardened one, and that would be the death of me.

And I will because every crazy hope of mine is held by my builder-and-wrecking-ball, truer-than-true Father, who bids me come and ask again, and who never makes me feel ashamed for having done so...whether His answer hurts or heals.

Those who look to Him are radiant, and their faces are never covered with shame. (Psalm 34:5, NIV)

©Leigh McLeroy, 2011