Column: Help Me, I'm Hopeless!

Note: A longer version of this column appeared as a Wednesday Witness post on the St. Michael Catholic Church website in February 2020. It is still just as true today!

As always, God is trying to change some habits in me that get in the way of loving as He loves. It’s exciting to feel the His presence and attention when He’s nudging me to some deeper insight or change. It’s exhilarating—for a while.

What happens with me usually looks like this: God is calling me to change—often interiorly, but affecting my external behavior, as well. I am grateful for His insights and inspired to try. I begin doing things differently. It feels good to do things differently, even if no one notices.

No one notices.

I’m tempted to tell someone, to gain a little reinforcement that I’m on the right track. On a good day, I resist this temptation, knowing that I’m just looking for an attaboy. On a not-so-good day, I tell someone and get a short-term fix of positive feedback to keep me going for a few more hours.

I try. I stumble, regain my footing, and try again. I journal. I pray some more. I feel different—a good different. Then something happens that pushes my buttons.

Usually it’s a little thing—in fact, the smaller and more ordinary, the more quickly my frustrations reach a boil: Here we go again. I’m trying to be a better person and do the right thing, but nothing changes. Should I say something? Maybe if I let people know what I’m trying to do, they would be more helpful instead of doing…THAT.

And I blow. As usual, my mouth is several seconds ahead of my heart, so all my frustration comes flooding out.

But frustration with whom? Often it feels like someone else—but really, it’s usually me.

We use the word hope to mean a great many things—from mere preference (I hope it’s a short winter and a sunny spring) to an aspiration or dream (I hope to write and publish a novel one day). But the virtue of hope is a particular thing. The virtue of hope is not mere optimism that things will work out; it’s the firm confidence that God is good and will deliver as promised—if we entrust ourselves to Him. It is the peace of knowing with full certainty that, no matter how it appears at the moment, God has everything well in hand and will bring about our good—if we entrust ourselves to Him.

Do we trust Him?

Reflecting on my typical emotional spiral, described above: Where is God in that line of thinking? Absent. Upon whose so-called strength am I relying? My own.

Theological virtues are gifts from God, so I must pray and ask Him for more. Virtues must also be practiced, so I must choose to turn to Him and trust Him—and not only in moments of discouragement or frustration, but in all moments.

To that end, may this prayer of St. Teresa of Avila be my own: “Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end” (CCC 1821). Amen.