Lightening the Load with Hope

Dear readers, what is hope for?

Nowadays, it feels like we all have a thousand worries and fears. Maybe this isn’t everyone, but for me, I can feel like all those fears of what might happen weigh me down. My steps are heavy like I’m carrying a backpack full of rocks, but my worries are the only weight on my shoulders.

Hope is supposed to help with fear, isn’t it?

Why do we still sometimes feel weighed down when we try to have hope? Where have we been going wrong?

While I’m no expert, I think I’ve learned part of the answer through the God who has directed my odyssey. The best way to figure it out is to go back to my analogy of carrying a backpack full of rocks.

If my fears and worries weigh me down, how will adding anything, even hope, make the load lighter? It won’t. The way to lighten your load isn’t to simply “Have hope,” but to exchange your fears for hope. That means letting go of one to replace it with the other.

I know letting go of fears isn’t that easy. On my writing odyssey and the life around it, I’ve faced my share of fears, and they are easy to hold onto, but that’s the point. If you just try to add hope to fear, you’ll be weighed down even more by your efforts and naturally try to get rid of whatever is easiest.

I don’t think I have to convince anyone that it’s easier to give up hope than fear. All that giving up hope adds up to is putting us right back where we started, burdened by worry.

Hope isn’t meant to make our fears easier to carry; it’s meant to replace our fears. Carrying hope still can be a weight, but without fear, it’s a load you can walk tall with. As we’ve already agreed, fear isn’t that easy to get rid of, but you already know it’s worth the change.

As to how to make the shift, with perseverance. Perhaps you can lift the stones of fear from your bag and replace them with hope all by yourself. But, like any weight, it’s easier to lift with help.

If you’re not sure who you can ask to help you unburden your fears, there is someone who is more than willing to remove your fears, give you hope, and who you can trust. His name is Jesus.

2 Timothy 1:7 ~ “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

Perhaps you don’t believe in God, but what I’ve said about hope replacing fear still holds true. I invite you to Dare to Dream anyway. Ask and see; you have nothing to lose but the fear that’s weighing you down.

I know that lighter loads make all odysseys easier. Discard fear, dear readers, and have hope in the better days we all journey to find.

Until next time
~C.R. Ware

P.S. This month Pre Orders should be opening for All We Have to Remember on March 10th, once that day comes I will try to remember to add a link here but in case I forget it should be avalible for pre order online, check my books webpage under the bookshelf tab.