A Habit of Hope

My husband, Jay, recently gifted me a much-hyped fitness tracker ring. I popped it on a finger, figuring I’d occasionally use it to reach my step count goal, which is admittedly meager since my stroke affected my ability to walk almost any distance unassisted. Even so, I quickly became obsessed with refreshing the stats and even found my whole mood thrown off by a low sleep score or activity rating.

What can I say? As a goal-oriented high achiever, I love forming a new habit! But in my well-intentioned pursuits of optimized output and habit hacking, I have to ask myself: What are these habits amounting to? Does my lived-out reality actually sync up with my believed-in truth?

Beyond step counts and calendar blocking and managing screen time, I want to know how the habits of my soul can more seamlessly roll between what I believe about God and how I practice that belief. But sometimes it’s easy to confuse things that should be practiced for things that should be believed.

I once lived as if hope was a belief, an abstraction, something that would happen to me if I waited patiently enough. But then I survived a stroke that left me stranded in the grueling wilderness of an intensive care unit and neuro rehab facility for years. Few places on earth could inspire less optimism, much less a steady, sustaining hope.

Hope, I eventually learned, is an action. It must become a habit to be of much use. So I began practicing hope like I practiced writing or walking. I named the God I knew—the God of purpose and second chances—so I could remember what to expect from Him. Like a liturgy, I recalled His faithfulness to me in the past so I could anticipate His future provision. Again and again, I affirmed what I knew to be true, even when I didn’t feel it to be true: He brings beauty from ashes and turns mourning to dancing (Isaiah 61:3). I didn’t know when resurrection would finally happen, but I hoped and I hoped and I hoped.

No matter how uninspiring your circumstances may feel, I believe you can practice stubborn hope today. You are capable of proactively recognizing and redefining what is good in your life, here and now. You can recall and repeat God’s faithfulness in your life until hope becomes a reflex.

God, you are faithful to turn our ashes into beauty, our heartache into hope. Remind me of the redemption you’ve already worked out in my life so the habit of hope can carry me when the feeling of hope fails me. Help me practice what I can’t manage to believe today. Thank you, God. May it be so.