The email says “good news.”
So you should take it at face value and be happy, right?
You'd think.
But instead of feeling anything close to relief, you read it twice, roll your eyes thinking, Yeah, I bet, and immediately start building the list of reasons it probably won't actually work anyway.
Maybe they'll change their mind.
Maybe there's a catch.
Maybe this is one of those things that sounds good now and turns into a disaster three weeks from now.
Whatever. Don't get too excited yet.
Have you ever caught yourself doing that?
Something good happens and before the good feeling even has a chance to land, you've already started preparing for the possibility that it won't last.
I know that reflex.
And I don't think it means you're negative.
Sometimes you've just been disappointed enough times that hope starts to feel a little dangerous.
Because hope asks something of you.
It asks you to care about an outcome you can't control.
It asks you to imagine something working before you know that it will.
And if you've done that before—really let yourself believe something was going to happen—and then watched it fall apart?
Of course part of you remembers.
You remember the plan that didn't work.
The promise that didn't hold.
The opportunity you thought was finally the opportunity.
The prayer you were so sure was going to be answered one way, only to watch the story go somewhere completely different.
After enough of those, disappointment can start teaching you a strategy:
Don't get too excited.
Keep your expectations reasonable.
Wait until it's certain.
Assume there could be a catch.
That way, if it falls apart, at least you won't feel stupid for believing it might work.
There's just one problem.
You don't only protect yourself from disappointment that way.
You start protecting yourself from hope too.
And I don't think I realized how much that was costing me.
Because there is a difference between being wise about uncertainty and refusing to let anything good reach you until it can guarantee it won't hurt later.
Nothing can make that guarantee.
People can't.
Opportunities can't.
Plans definitely can't.
Even the things we desperately want can turn out differently than we imagined.
So if I require certainty before I let myself hope, I'm going to spend a lot of my life standing outside good things with my arms crossed, waiting for proof that it's safe to come in.
That's not really how I want to live.
And faith complicates this for me in the best way.
Because biblical hope was never a promise that every circumstance would unfold exactly the way I wanted it to.
That's a much easier version of hope.
I believe because I know what's going to happen.
Faith asks me to trust God while admitting I don't.
That's harder.
And strangely, I think it's safer too.
Because now my hope doesn't have to live or die with one outcome.
Isaiah 42:3 says, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”
I love the image of a smoldering wick.
It isn't a roaring fire.
It's barely there.
Still lit.
I think sometimes that's what hope looks like after disappointment.
We keep expecting ourselves to bounce back with this giant declaration that we believe again.
Maybe you don't.
Maybe right now you read the good email and still think, We'll see.
Okay.
You don't have to force yourself into excitement you don't feel.
But you also don't have to immediately explain away every good thing before it has a chance to be good.
Read the email.
Let yourself smile if you want to.
Tell someone.
Say thank you.
And when the voice starts listing all the ways this could still go wrong, you don't have to argue with it for twenty minutes.
You can simply admit:
I don't know how this turns out yet.
Because you don't.
That's the risk.
It's also the opening.
Hope doesn't require you to know that this particular thing will work.
Sometimes it begins with allowing something good to be good while it's here.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Episode 34: Why Hope Feels Unsafe After Repeated Disappointment and How to Rebuild Belief →