Stress fighter tip #5: Hope longer.
Shortly after I was diagnosed with cancer I went to a concert with my family.
As I sat there enjoying the music I was fighting the tears that wanted to flow down my cheeks.
I kept wondering if this was going to be my last concert, was I going to live long enough to see another.
Was it going to be my granddaughter’s last flute solo I was going to hear and the list went on.
Truly I had given up hope long before I even gave it a chance in my life.
I was doomed and everything I did, say, saw, or felt was as if it was going to be my last. Too often we do this, we give up hope before we even give hope a chance to work. It’s important for us to hope long enough for the next page in our life.
That next page or next chapter may or may not come but we need to live our lives as if it was currently being written.
Recently in my women’s Bible study I lead a student jokingly told me she didn’t dare miss a class because she would then miss out on what the next chapter of my life was going to be. In a very loving concern manner my friend would ask me, “Ok Karen, what now?”
The way my life was going at the time new chapters were being written faster than I could read them.
Honestly if I would have given up hope along time ago as my spirit wanted those new chapters never would have come. Turning over our hope to the situations we are in will never get us anywhere.
We must always maintain some kind of hope in us in order to endure. Although we would like to write our own chapters, pick our own beginnings and ends but we are not given that opportunity to its fullest extent. We get our input through all the choices we make in life but that’s it.
Good or bad, happy ending or not it doesn’t matter none of us get the opportunity to peak in the back of book to find how it all ends. Our job is to avoid the stress of worrying about it and maintain our hope. Don’t give up on the first sign of trouble.
Don’t let circumstances or other people dictate what kind of hope you hang on to. A longer hope is our thread to a good survival, a bridge to the next chapter in life, the walk way that moves us forward.
Read more posts by Karen Gillett here. Karen blogs for JenningsWire.