Hope for nothing...

“When hope is hungry, everything feeds it.” -Mignon McLauglin, The Neurotic’s Notebook

I’ve been thinking about hope a lot lately. When Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit a knowledge was gained about the world, a world in which evil as well as good could now exist. To every yin there is a yang and it is in opposition we can truly appreciate that which is good, that which comes from our Father in Heaven… but that is what troubles me… where does hope come from?

Hope falls along the same lines as faith, both being a desire to believe in something, but faith is deeper in that it comes with much more confidence and conviction. Hope is much more fleeting, it being belief that something might happen, which still at its core, hope seems to be a righteous and good thing to feel. The opposite of hope is despair, yet all too often I find that it is that very hope that leads us to despair. There is that cliché saying to expect the worst but hope for the best, the theory driving the remark is that by expecting the worst possible outcome one will save themselves the dissatisfaction of getting their hopes up. But hope is an expectation. It is a notion that just maybe for once, that thing we have wished for will become a reality. But where I am stuck is that if hope is righteous, if it is good, then why does it let me down so much?

Hope seems to be a form of trickery designed by the likes of Satan. It only serves as a means to raise my spirits under false pretenses. The higher I go, the further I have to fall. It seems so unfair that he can use a feeling so synonymous with faith against me and lead me down a path of sadness and turmoil.

I think the reason I find hope to be so bewildering is because I struggle with revelation. I know that Heavenly Father has very personal ways in which He speaks to each of us, but in my three years as a member of the church, I feel as though I have yet to fully understand the way in which He speaks to me. There was a saying I heard once in relief society that rings so very true for me. The still small voice of the Holy Ghost was likened to the subtle sweetness of a grape. Sometimes in life there are moments when we experience a much more severe flavor, that of a jalapeño. No matter how we try to taste the grape, the jalapeño is just much too strong to taste anything else…

I have always been one to feel things deeply, often times I have feelings so strong that when I am kneeling and asking for an answer to a question that is plaguing me, I am so very hopeful for a particular response that my heart cannot hear what He is actually telling me. Its hard because in this sense I am my own worst enemy and end up getting in the way of myself. It is from there I begin to find what I think are answers from Heavenly Father all around me. I see insignificant encounters and slighted gestures as fated or signs that something more is happening. He must want me to hold out hope, why else would He let this keep happening?

It is as I said before. I think Satan knows how privy I am to being hopeful and how easily I can make much of something as simple as a coincidence, and so that is exactly what he provides me with. I think he is the one that wants me to feel hopeful, not Heavenly Father. He would have me believe that when my expectations go unrealized, my hopes dashed, that it is Heavenly Father who has let me down.

I think in its simplest nature all I need to remember is that everything good comes from Heavenly Father and everything that is bad comes from Satan. I will not be sad, I will not be let down, I will not be disappointed, because that is what Satan wants, he wants me to feel defeated.

That being said, knowing my weakness for hope, I don’t see myself trying to understand the spirit or ask for any sort of answers anytime soon. At this point I feel that my ability to translate and understand His messages is sub par, I think anything short of a note falling from the sky with explicit directions as to what He would have me do would just fall on my deaf ears, so until that happens, I will hope for nothing…

“I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine;
For if from yours you will not part,
Why, then, shouldst thou have mine?” - John Suckling