6 Ways to Stay Hopeful

Bread and flour spread across a table to represent the ordinary in our life, one way to stay hopeful

These days are not ordinary days. How can we stay hopeful in the midst of instability, inequality, and fear? In this post, I’m sharing six ways to reconnect to the ordinary and to stay hopeful.

These days are not ordinary days.

Big things are hanging by delicate threads. Justice, mercy, laws, equality, love, inequality, life, prejudices, rights, freedoms, viruses, fear.

Some days it’s too big and beyond me. Unusual. Extraordinary.

No matter where on the political landscape we plant our banners, everything can feel hopeless.

(Now, I know what banner I’m flying — politically — but I’m not going to share that. You don’t come here for political debates. You come here to think about books, pillows, journaling, pens, and how those ordinary things are connected to hope and faith and love. At least that’s my goal with this blog.)

Remember the Ordinary

So especially now, I’m sinking into some ordinary to remember hope.

Listening to the rain.
Writing a card, stamping it, carrying it to the mailbox, and lifting up the red flag.
Knitting.
Ironing a wrinkled edge of a pillowcase.
Sticking a finger into the batch of chocolate chip cookie dough to taste.
Sitting by a crackling fire.
Driving to the grocery store.
Reading a good mystery or a book about sixteenth-century Germany as I research my own novel. (Where, by the way, very similar challenges of civil unrest, plagues, and fears faced people with names like Magdalena, Luther, Balthasar.)

We live in such a time and place where these ordinary things are, well, ordinary.

I don’t have to stress about how to pay for my next skein of yarn, let alone my next meal. I can enjoy a fire simply because it’s cozy and not because it’s keeping me from freezing. Thankfully, I love my work, my family, my friends, and my Savior.

But not everyone does. I know that. And for all those without hope, love, or food, I lift holy hands in prayer. May the Lord be merciful and meet you and your loved ones exactly where you are with exactly what you need today.

In my faith tradition, we trust that God gives hope through His gifts in concrete, ordinary things. Things we can touch, taste, smell.

Water. (Baptism)
Words. (The Bible.)
Bread and wine. (The Lord’s Supper.)

6 Ways to Stay Hopeful

This may sound like a lot of theological jargon, but it’s how He works. Through the ordinary things. The things we can touch, taste, see, hear, smell.

So during these unordinary days, I’m focusing on six extraordinarily ordinary gifts that will give me hope and help me stay hopeful:

Praying.
Seeing.
Hearing.
Touching.
Smelling.
Tasting

Yep. Prayer + our 5 senses.

I invite you to join me. Notice things.

Throughout your day, take these six things or -ings with you everywhere. (Kind of hard not to take your eyes, ears, tastebuds and all, but notice what those senses bring to you.) If you are so inclined, as I am about so many things, write down what you sense. One smell. One taste. One touch. One sight. One sound.. Write it somewhere, on a calendar or in a notebook. Or not. Just notice it.

This might be harder than you think, noticing things other than what you see. Try it.

When you walk into your house, what do you smell? As you eat breakfast, what do you taste? As you dress for the day ahead, what do you touch? When you shop for groceries, what do you hear?

Notice prayer.

Maybe you are already a steady prayer warrior. Beautiful. Just notice the act of prayer itself. And give thanks.

If you are stuck in the golly-I-always-forget-to-pray mindset? Try taking prayer with you wherever you go. Not just at the supper table or before you close your eyes at night. Take prayer with you as you stir the soup, toss the whites into the dryer, or walk down the crackers and chips aisle.

In a couple weeks, about the time the anchor-people and our social media news feeds will be shouting about the election and half the nation is rejoicing and the other half is grieving, I’m going to reflect on these simple ordinary gifts and the hope that they bring.

Maybe I will have started a new habit.

I promise to return and share what I’ve noticed. And I know I will give thanks for these six ordinary gifts that ground me, give me hope, and remind me I am His.