My Word for 2017: Hope

2016 was not a year of hope for me. 

 

death, tragedy, and loss marked the close of the year. 

pain ebbed and flowed around me like an ocean tide. 

 

Since August, hopelessness has pressed down hard upon my spirit.

I have Jesus, so I have Hope, but the feeling of hope has been absent from me.

So for 2017, I choose Hope as my word of the year.  Not because I feel it or believe in a magical "name and claim it" kind of faith. But because truth trumps feeling. So I choose to believe the best is yet to come, pain has purpose, mourning will be turned to dancing, and the trying of our souls produces fruit that is worth its weight in gold.

I choose to find Hope in the clear voice of my daughter turning her piano practice time into a song leading service, urging her imaginary audience to "sing along."

I choose to find Hope in the spontaneous dance party that spontaneously erupted in my house last night as my husband and daughter broke out the moves to a favorite Brooklyn Tabernacle praise team song.

I choose to see these moments as gifts.   Rays of sunlight bursting through the clouds.

I choose to look for Hope.