Slippery Hope and Roadblocks

Over the last couple of months, a familiar but long-missed feeling has started growing in my heart.

My 5:50 wake up time on running mornings doesn't feel like an impossible hurdle, making breakfast and doing the tasks of the day take up the appropriate amount of brain time and nothing more. We accomplish much and when we're done accomplishing, I try to pat us on the back collectively about our good work rather than focusing on what we missed. I notice sunrises and sunsets with an inner thrill that has been missing. My children's faces even seem sweeter.

I try to lay aside those thoughts that don't belong in my new framework. Anger...you go away. Betrayal...you go away, too. Insecurity, doubt, fear...take a hike.

I have this fluttering of hope that maybe, just maybe, we're moving out of the winter into the summer. Maybe we're arriving at the oasis that marks the end of an extended desert journey. Maybe the Lord has tried us enough that he'll finally allow us to flourish spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically and financially.

Maybe...

But hope can be such a slippery bugger. It takes so much effort to clear my mind of negativity, to remember that roadblocks are just that: blocks. Not journey stoppers, but blocks.  I can travel around them, or climb over them, or if I'm really at the end of my ability to cope, sometimes the grace of God can just lift me over them.

I think that He's trusted me enough in the last few years to lift me over my hurdles less and less often. He's allowing me to struggle and fall. He's allowing my muscles to burn with effort...to reach the breaking point and move beyond it. I still need His grace, of course, and it is often all there is giving me the ability to cope, but I know he's letting me grow, even though the growth is painful, sometimes even seemingly unendurable.

I hit another roadblock today. It nearly sent me reeling, especially since I had allowed myself the hope that something important was finally going to run smoothly. That's a dangerous hope...a hope for perfection in this life. And that's just not going to happen. The right hope is that when things don't run smoothly (and really, when DO they? I think I've decided the idea of things running smoothly is just fiction), I will be given the strength and ability to cope.

(Again, my caveat...I'd really REALLY love for things to run smoothly. I'm no masochist.)

I'm going to pull myself up by my bootstraps, apologize to my children for getting snappy, and move on. I can't fix this block myself, so I'll work on the next one instead.  Maybe the one where I have a $122 library fine?  (Shhh...don't tell David. It will be much lower when I find all the missing books...  Sigh.)

Oh, and it's easier to hope on more than five hours of sleep.  Curse you, Veronica Mars and Netflix.