Sweet sounds of hope

Aloha everyone,

Before we begin for today, let’s listen to this song:

Gosh, it’s so good.

As a country boy at heart, I do love me some good ‘ole country music (not most of today’s ‘trucks and gettin’ girls and bonfires and beer’ tunes, but the soulful storytelling that connects to our spirits and the reality of the human experience).

I’m a sucker for female musicians, and I’m a big fan of Maren Morris (particularly because of her genius songwriting), so when I discovered this week that she has some new music out, I had to check it out right away.

When I first listened to this song, I bawled. Like, instantaneously.

The way these lyrics cut to my heart was one of those spiritual moments where you feel an artist was narrating your life story:

I'm done fillin' a cup with a hole in the bottom
I'm takin' an axe to the tree
The rot at the roots is the root of the problem
But you wanna blame it on me…

Ooh, do you hear that?
It's the sound of a new wind blowin'
Ooh, do you feel that?
Heart lettin' go of the weight it's been holdin'
I've made miracles in the shadows
But now that I'm out in the sun
I'll never stop growin', wherever I'm goin'
Hope I'm not the only one

Hope has been tough for me to find this year. I’ve been trying to flip over every rock and check every nook and cranny, but I haven’t had much luck in finding it. As someone who holds a long-term relationship with depression, hope has often been a tricky concept for me to grasp.

When I was in high school and my depression hit a deep low, I couldn’t see after graduation. It was like a void in my brain — turning 19, 20, 21 felt like a grey cloud and turning thirty felt impossible.

Throughout this month of September, I’ve had a number of breakdowns as things have finally started to slow down enough for me to begin to grieve and mourn the end of my marriage. During those breakdowns, I couldn’t see through to the end of the week — I didn’t have hope that my situation would get better.

But then, I FaceTimed my mom.

And she brought me back down to earth.

She let me cry, and we laughed, and we cried together, and we talked about our roots and where we come from, and she told me stories of how she didn’t have it all together when she was my age, and we talked about how we’ve pulled each other out of the darkness before by tightening up our bootstraps and how we’ll continue to do so for one another until the end of time.

And then, the light at the end of tunnel finally began to shine.

I could start to see to the end of the week. The things on my to-do list became exciting and not overwhelming. And my personal agency and power over making a positive difference in my life and changing my situation became to be clearer.

I finally recognized and realized that I have choice. If I want my life to be different, I can make the choice to make it different. If I want my life to be happier and full of love, I can make decisions that support this and promote such an environment. If I want financial freedom, I can make decisions that support a deeper income and I can make choices that reduce my expenses. If I want to be healthy, then I can eat nutritiously and exercise intentionally.

Now, I have hope of things getting better, because I have the opportunity to make them better. Because I am alive, I have choice, and I have agency.

And so do you.

We all do.

We all have choice. And when the hard days are here and when the sun isn’t poking out of the clouds, we can embrace the grey of the day, saying “This is what we have today.” And we can choose to dance in the gloom, making the most out of what’s here.

And then, the sun will return, and we’ll dance in that too.

So, embrace what you have. Embrace the suck if it sucks right now. Allow yourself to feel what you need to feel. And then, when you’re ready, find any silver lining. Find any choice and agency you have in the situation, and think through how any glimmers of hope within the situation can transform the outcomes you are currently experiencing.

Hope can be hard to find. But when you reach out for support, accept your situation, and find what you can do to make things better, hope arises.

And what a sweet sound it is:

Thank you, Mom. I love you.

Everything will be okay. Things are getting better, and we just gotta believe it. Because we’re making it happen — all together.