Abundant Hope

OK, I'm going to warn you ahead of time that I came to this one in a really weird way (you are entering a scary place ... my mind).  As I was walking down the hallway at work, I looked over at a coworker that has struggled with her weight for years.  Since it always seems to circle back to me, I thought about my own frustrations with weight loss and kinda hoped to go into a coma for awhile and wake up skinny again.  (I warned you this was weird.)  Interestingly enough, though, my mind immediately dumped the idea - I would miss so much of my kids lives if were out of it (again, why I was mentally treating a coma as an actual option or potentially good idea, I'll never know).  That lead to some of the stress thoughts of yesterday, my kids being a major source of stress. 

And THAT lead to a realization that the flip side of stress is hope.  No matter how many times I've disappointed with something in life, there is always hope that the next time will be different ... better.  Like most people who struggle with their weight, I've been up and down, on diets, on exercise, etc. for years.  Yet I've never permanently reached the point where I say that's it, no more.  Oh sure, I have moments of giving up, but there's always that flicker of hope in the back of my mind that nudges me forward.  It's the same way with the kids.  One of the big stressors with my older girl is that despite being incredibly gifted intellectually, she simply forgets to record her homework, or she forgets to do it, or she does it and forgets to turn it in.  Needless to say, her grades have taken a beating because of this.  Yet each week starts with the hope that this is the week she'll figure it out.  It never seems to be an option for me to believe that she won't.  I read a passage that said "Hope is faith in the future tense."  I like that.  Here's to future tense faith!