One of my FAVORITE couples of all time: Seth and Summer
I've been thinking a lot about hope lately. A few months ago, I was running with one my best friends and she said something that really resonated with me.
We were talking about dating (always) and she's all, "I know we're suppose to be full of hope, but sometimes I don't know how much longer I can be hopeful. I feel like things are getting worse, not better."
At the time I wasn't sure what to think of that. I am, in general, a very optimistic person and very regularly believe that things will work out for your greater good if you believe they will.
I have always been someone who is genuinely thrilled for my friends when they get engaged, married and start families. I love to see other people happy, especially if I love them. I believe that everyone deserves to get what they want.
But every once in a while, I find myself having a week (or six) so full of literal despair that I wonder where all my hope is hiding.
So, since I am on what I am hoping praying is the almost-end of a full-fledged funk, and with General Conference* this weekend, I decided to search old conference talks for insight into how to be more hopeful.
Of course, one of the most pertinent talks I discovered was given by President Uchtdorf, who I am convinced I was besties with in a past life. He just like, gets me.
In October 2008, he gave a talk entitled, "The Infinite Power of Hope." He begins his remarks with a story of his young mother fleeing Czechoslovakia to Germany during WWII with her four children, including President Uchtdorf, who was a toddler at the time, to escape as refugees and live with her parents.
He narrates a night during which he and his siblings were separated from her by accident, and details her frantic searching, and how her faith that she would be reunited with her children overcame her fear that they would be lost forever.
Now that he has long been an adult, and experienced times of great despair, President Uchtdorf expressed his wish that he could have sat next to her during the time she was searching for he and his siblings, and ask her what kept her going on her search.
What made her think that maybe, just maybe, the next train she came across during her time of uncertainty might be the one with her family on board. Why didn't she just give up, drop her head into her hands, and think, they can never be found.
Now, of course I was reading this talk on the N-train after work, and as I finished reading that story, I was basically sobbing. I couldn't stop thinking about how I myself am in what I see as one of the most important searches of my life.
I don't like to blog much about my future husband. I have never classified myself as of those girls that is just waiting for some guy to come and complete me. I finished college, lived in Europe, ran a half marathon (with another in a few weeks) and have an awesome job in an amazing city--this girl stops for no one.
But there are definitely days when I feel the weight of my single-dom pulling me under like a dangerous rip-tide that is relentlessly surrounding every inch of my body. I've been addicted to the new Owl City CD (thanks, Andrew!) and there's a song with a line that reads, "there were days, when each hour, was a war I fought to survive," and during the last few weeks, there have been moments where I feel I am fighting a larger battle than I can possibly handle.
But as I kept reading President Uchtdorf's talk (and pulled out my Kleenex, so awkward!), I found comfort in his inspired words. He said, "Hope is one leg of a three-legged stool, together with faith and charity. These three stabilize our lives regardless of the rough or uneven surfaces we might encounter at the time."
How brilliant, I thought, as my streetcar jolted along, that hope is not hope alone.
He goes on to say, "Hope is critical to both faith and charity. When disobedience, disappointment and procrastination erode faith, hope is there to uphold our faith. When frustration and impatience challenge charity, hope braces our resolve and urges us to care for our fellow men without expectation of a reward. The brighter our hope, the greater our faith. The stronger our hope, the purer our charity."
I sat and looked out the window as the shops and houses in Cole Valley whirred by, and thought, if Dieter's (we're on a first name basis, let's be real) mom could be hopeful that she would find her kids in the pitch black night in some European wilderness, I can have hope.
I can be full of hope. And I should be full of hope.
Because even though there have been many awkward moments of hesitation in my dating life, as well as several unreturned phone calls and conversations after which I literally laid in bed at night and thought, "what just happened," it is better to keep hoping that through all the bad first kisses, ridiculous second dates and totally misread signals that I'll find what I am searching for.
I can't just drop my head into my hands and say, "I give up;" though somedays, I feel like throwing in the towel is my only option. I have to keep moving forward.
President Uchtdorf closed with this, he said:
"And to all who suffer-to all who feel discouraged, worried or lonely-I say with love and deep concern for you, never give in."
I mean, how can you say no to that?
xoxo
*For those of you who are unaware of what General Conference is, it's a bi-annual conference that the church holds where its leaders address all of the members from the conference center in Salt Lake City.
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