There is no picture this time, because it is my belief that it would jinx the great possibilities of what is to come….so read on.

I think it was after my dad died in 2016 that my faith in what is to come shifted dramatically towards the negative. Curiously, I would call myself a Pollyanna by nature, but my father, however, used to say it was just naivete. Over time I realized while my optimism was a great gift, when blind and disregarding the glaringly obvious, it is ceased to be a gift and became a millstone around my neck. When I say blind, I have always had a tendency to superimpose my belief and hope in individuals over who they really were and are at any given moment. Seeing potential in someone, or a community or country and seeing who they really are, are two very different things…and it is a bit embarrassing to admit that in the past I had been pretty thick about who or what I believed about the people that surrounded me. The school of hard knocks woke me up to this fact in many blistering ways and I had to learn that as much as I am hard on myself, I had to learn to be hard on others too when they came up short and I was the one left wounded. I know plenty of others have had the same kind of experiences, but since these are my observations, I choose to let the wounds help me evolve, and looking back I am a very slow learner, it would seem. I am also fully aware that I don’t live in a vacuum, I am culpable as well, I’m sure there are those who are disappointed in me too, but what is a bit different for me is that I already walk in the world completely unfiltered, so what you see is what you get, flaws and all, so usually people are just disappointed in me right away. There are plenty of posts beginning with 2017 that deal with truth, lies, power etc. that show a progression of how I tried to move more objectively in the world while trying hard to remain optimistic as well as hold onto the faith I always had in my future path. While those were pretty dark days of the soul, I knew I had to rebuild the foundation in how I moved forward in the world, while often in companionable silence with others (I never talked about it much), I grew to know that my faith in what is to come is ultimately a solitary endeavor, I learned how to rely on myself, and reassess what that looked like for everyone else in my life and shift accordingly.

Which brings me to this moment. I think the years of building and learning hard lessons paved the way for me to walk with cautious optimism into my future. Don’t get me wrong, I think we are living in the biggest shit show of our time, where foundations of culture are rattling against the will of powerful men (not being sexist here, just look around) who just want to be King of the Hill at the expense of the less powerful. I am not blindly optimistic anymore. While I still see and recognize unlimited potential in myself and others, the proof of that is in how you actually walk in the world. I have let go of false limitations that hinder my movement and embrace the fact that while at any given moment, my trajectory may bring me to uncomfortable and scary moments, it may lead me to as many amazing and celebratory ones too. It is simply a consequence of living in a deeply flawed yet beautiful world. And I do trust that God has my back. This quote from Jeremiah 29:11-14 helps me move through the tough moments as well as those that make my heart happy:

For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope. When you call me, when you go to pray to me, I will listen to you. When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart you will find me with you, says the LORD, and I will change your lot.

I truly believe that God would not have called me to this life to be stymied by it, even when it was by my own flawed sight. But as I have said before, I am limited to four dimensions, but God is not. God’s sees the end of my trajectory, I cannot. I do however know that if my movements are fueled by the deep love in my heart that I can withstand any challenge before me. I do believe God listens, and when I look for Him, for love, I will find him. For the first time in my life, I think I can say with confidence that the older wiser version of my Pollyanna nature is spot on in believing we can have faith in what’s to come.