The Fine Line of Hope

To give up hope when there is victory in sight is a mistake. But to hang on to false hope is a fantasy that can end in dismal failure.

Necessary Endings, Henry Cloud*

Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can keep us pushing forward when things look bleak. Hope can also cause us to stay in awful situations. The question is: how can we tell the difference? There are no easy answers to this either.

I will disagree with Dr. Cloud slightly when it comes to this quote. I don’t believe there is such a thing as “false hope”. There’s hope that can bring us nothing but misery as long as we hold onto it, but I don’t think that’s “false”. “Misguided”? Maybe, but not false. So, when do we give up on this misguided hope? When do we press on?

I think it’s different for everybody. We all have a different pain tolerance and a different threshold for what is acceptable in our lives. What we need to do more than anything is be self-aware enough to know when we’ve hit our limit. When we try to move past it, we risk ourselves. We risk our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. We risk our long-term commitment to whatever lies before us. We risk our passion and excitement.

So, how do we know where our limit is before we blow right past it?

1. Constantly check in with yourself
2. Choose your health
3. Mourn the moment
4. Focus on something new.

Constantly Check In With Yourself
We can’t get very far in life if we aren’t self-aware. We need to do regular self-evaluations, and in these evaluations, we have to be completely honest with ourselves. We can fool ourselves more often than we realize, and so, we have to be sure we aren’t being self-deceptive. The more we check in, the more we are going to be able to recognize our limits, and the more we are going to be able to stop ourselves from living into misguided hope and despair.

Choose Your Health
This is hard. It feels selfish. It feels like we are only thinking of ourselves, but the fact of the matter is, if we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t help anybody at all. This doesn’t mean we don’t stretch ourselves from time to time. But it does mean that we don’t put ourselves into unhealthy situations just to hold on to this misguide hope.

Mourn the Moment
When we let go of misguided hope, we have to acknowledge that there is a real loss in our lives. At one point, we didn’t know this hope was misguided. It may have been that way from the beginning, but, for us, it’s not misguided until we are ready to let it go. And when that transition happens, we need to allow ourselves to mourn.

Mourning is when we are sad about a potential future that is no longer possible. That’s why death is so hard. We imagine a future with this individual, and once death takes hold, that future is no longer possible. The same is true for certain situations in our lives. We dream about what could be. It fuels our hope. But, then, one day, we discover that hope was misguided. The future we dreamed about is no more. There is reason to mourn. Don’t skip this step.

Focus On Something New
The path you thought was open was untenable. You’ve mourned it, and now it’s time to find a new path. Now, I think this is obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway. This in no way applies to the loss of a loved one. This is when certain things that we have been hoping for organizationally fall through. When that job doesn’t work out. When that project falls flat on its face. In those times, we need to find a new path forward. We need a new project on which to focus our time, energy and hope. Don’t give up on hope just because something didn’t work out. Find a new one.

*Amazon affiliate link. I read this book during a very difficult time in ministry. I had someone on staff that needed to go, but I really wrestled with it. This book helped me come to the healthiest conclusion for the long term at that church.