What do you do when your outside world does not match the inside one? When outside you, people are excited as they prepare for Christmas, revel in the hope of the season, and dream about the future to come, but you cannot match them because you feel bleak, tired, and soul-weary? When your dreams seem to be ever just out of reach, elusive, and as ethereal as the fog that graces the area?
That’s where I am today.
I had not one but two interviews for the same job in this last week. They went extremely well, and I’m expecting to hear news within the next 2-3 days. I hope, but the experience of being turned down so many times in the past year has left me reluctant to hope. My family is holding their collective breath with me, and I hate that they have to endure this anxiety alongside me. I’m trying to keep the little flicker of hope alive in so many different ways. I just spent a while looking at places to live and dreamed what it will feel like to once again have a place my family can call our own. I’ve mentally placed myself in the office where the job is and have imagined myself doing the work. I’ve even changed my physical appearance with a sassy new haircut and a rinse that erased the gray hair. I want so much to be able to get the phone call with a “yes” that I’ve imagined how the call will go and what I will do immediately following it.
And then I open my eyes and see where I sit right now, in my parents’ home, in cramped quarters, in stress and tension.
Today at church, the choir sang one of my favorite Amy Grant songs called Breath of Heaven. There’s a line in the song that goes “Help me be strong/help me be/help me,” and I started sobbing when I heard it. That line is exactly where I am right now: holding on to hope against memories of frustration and despair, trusting that God is always with me, clinging to Her like a frightened child.
What gets me is my own petty problems in the midst of the horrific events of this past week. I feel so selfish when my own angst pales in comparison to the very real horror that other people are living with this day. However, I can hear my counselor’s voice telling me that my needs are as real and as compelling as theirs. I think we all have our personal trials, and I am thankful that mine does not involve the death of someone I love.
Someday (soon, I hope), all this anxiety and tension will pass. The light of hope continues to flicker.
Related articles
- Burning Flame, flickers (justmehibana.wordpress.com)
- Hope (teacher-preneur.com)
- Letting the light Shine (reeknittingwordswithgod.wordpress.com)
- An Everlasting Flicker of Hope (juliesunne.com)
renplus 
I suppose you will have often heard the platitude “live for today” Judging from your remark about being in Church today and how the psalm helped you, I assume you are a Christian (or as my niece once remarked, “I am catholic not christian”) A lot of what we hear in the readings and the Gospel is about TODAY as in psalm 94 “when today you listen to his voice” or looking at the story of the manna in the desert; it was provided daily and if one wanted to hoard it, it went off. Give us this day our daily bread – means not “give me a weeks or a months supply” We are invited to place all our trust in God’s providence and in the meantime our work is to tackle all the little and big things that cross our path on any particular day. It might just be one smile, one kind word, one task we hate doing, one moment of listening to somebody who needs to talk and so on. We are living in wicked times where we have lost sight of each other – maybe this can be THE OPPORTUNITY. Everything we do, we can and should do for the glory of God whether it’s a high paid job or being unemployed and even in accepting our brokenness.. However, I may have totally missed your point, in which case I ask for forgiveness – AND I wish you a good and fruitful week full of hope and unexpected joy. Noreen