‘Stop hoping, start living’
Waiting is exhausting right? Here is why I am trying to do things differently
I’m back! After a short and unplanned Sabbatical I have returned to my metaphorical desk in order to pen my weekly Substack essays for your reading pleasure. And what, you may ask, was the reason for my prolonged departure? My honest answer would have to be a distinct lack of hope.
I get frustrated with myself, often, as someone who goes on about joy and lives a life that seeks to embody that, when I am unable to conjure up the ongoing sense of joy in a way that is truly authentic. It feels as though I am lying in my WhatsApp profile which simply says #Joy. And the delicate gold band I wear on my wrist constantly with JOY inscribed in tiny letters feels like a mockery of the existence I seek.
Hope.
I have existed on a diet of desperation, rather than hope. And as a Christian that has fed into feelings of failure and depression
In the last few months, I have taken huge financial, emotional, relational and spiritual blows. I have been present at work, because I have to be. And I have been present with friends when I have managed to drag myself away from my apartment. But oh, I have wept in private. I have wept because of the things I cannot do for myself and the way I cannot make up the resources I need in order to live a happy, stable life in all areas. I have existed on a diet of desperation, rather than hope. And as a Christian that has fed into feelings of failure and depression.
Why can’t I just get on with things? Why can’t I believe God for the things He has promised me and the hope (that word again) for the things I cannot yet see but are almost certainly a part of my future. That doors closed will one day be open, that ventures explored will one day result in success and that I will be restored; in every place that I have experienced deep loss.
Joel 2:25 reads: The Lord says, “I will give you back what you lost, to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts. It was I who sent this great destroying army against you.”
(We’ll leave that last line for the theologians to work out but you get the idea – restoration etc)
Here are someone else’s words creating an acronym for Hope:
Hold
On
Pain
Ends.
It’s a nice, cute Pinterest style quote to pin up and look to. But in my despair, I have recognised that hope is much stronger than simply waiting for something to end. It has to be. Because otherwise you focus on what you are waiting for. When will this season end and this new one begin? Why do I have to go through such a shit time and when can I be free again?
‘The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?’
A scripture I discovered recently (and look, please don’t @ me, just because I’m a Christian doesn’t mean I’m au fait with every single word in the Bible lol) reads:
‘The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?’
And guess where that scripture is? Proverbs 20:24! What a fun way for God to remind me that in this year of 2024, I’d need to hold on to this verse tighter than ever.
So that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, what I’ve had to do. Events, interviews, competitions and dates have passed without me seeing the things I have been hoping for; some of them for years. I can’t simply hold on, waiting for the pain to end. I am living in the pain.
I read somewhere that survivors of concentration camps were those whose mindset was actually set on endurance rather than survival i.e. getting out of there. They weren’t necessarily thinking, ‘this will be over soon’ but ‘okay I can get by on this tiny piece of bread’.
And please do not misunderstand me, I am in no way comparing my life to that of someone in a concentration camp. (Gosh, imagine.) But I am in what feels like an eternal season of pain, with occasional uplifts of sunshine, friendship and love. And as much as I would prefer it to be the other way around – wouldn’t we all? – and no matter how much it hurts (and it really does) I am learning to live somewhat peacefully in the discomfort.
Well, I’m trying to anyway. Anyone else in that space too?
Tola x
I’m the editor and creative director at Premier Woman Alive and co-host of the YouTube show Sisterhood. In 2019, I delivered a TEDx Talk on Debunking the Myth of Success and my first book, 'Still Standing:100 Lessons From An 'Unsuccessful' Life' (SPCK) is out now.
When a friend of mine was waiting for life to be less painful after a devastating divorce, one verse she said she reminded herself of every night was from Psalm 27: 'I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.'
I liked this.
A long time ago, it seems, you commented on one of my Substack posts, and we had a brief friendly exchange. It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember. But, I really appreciated this particular recent post of yours, and wanted to reach out to you with some Christian encouragement, although we're probably miles apart in our at home Christian spaces. As James says to us all, "My brothers and sisters, count it pure joy when you are involved in every sort of trial. Realize that when your faith is tested this makes for endurance. Let endurance come to its perfection so that you may be fully mature and lacking in nothing."
What can be easier to talk about and harder to work through than that "pure joy"? But we all gotta visit that place more than once.
From starting out as a comfortable cradle agnostic, I touched the Christian space at about age 33 and was baptized at 40, and that was 43 years ago. So, I've had to pull through the slough of "pure joy" more than once.
So, sister, keep on slogging. Part of my morning prayer is "Jesus, abide in me and I in you; Jesus, abide for me and I for you; Jesus, abide with me and I with you; as you abide in your Father." When I pray the "with me" line, I've recently been imagining being yoked with Jesus, like two oxen pulling the load of my life and those I love. I think that yoke image comes to me because I learned recently that one of the titles of the Devil in old Hebrew is "the yoke-less one". Don’t want to go around that way, so I imagine instead, Jesus' light yoke of "pure joy".
And FYI, here’s the post you commented on, I've changed "Michelangelo painted" to "Michelangelo painfully painted", since he was yoked to that hard job for a long time.
*****
OVERHEAD
Don’t imagine bulging muscles
to flesh out God Almighty
like Michelangelo
painfully painted
on his back.
~ ~ ~
Yet, we can’t breath without symbols,
so…
think of the gardener
who loves weeds and worms
as well as wheat and apples.
~ ~ ~
The cultivator of spontaneity
who whistles silently
while he works out the numbers
weights and measures
of all things
in flickering shades of light
and tender, bulging,
shocking love.
*****
God's shocking love includes that "pure joy".