Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
I love long walks in the woods and swimming in the lake and hiking up mountains. Being outside makes me come alive. This means living in a place with four distinct seasons definitely triggers my happy.
But the downside is the least favorite season of the four gets equal billing. I admit that the dog days of winter elbow me facedown in a ditch. This time of year in the Midwest feels colored with hopelessness.
Gray. Cold. Dead. Blergh.
By the time March begins, I need a beach like I need oxygen.
Sometimes it feels like winter will last forever. It feels like only fools dare hope for spring.
I think that’s how some of the folks we work with feel. That they will be stuck forever in the exact same place. Not growing. Not progressing. Hopeless.
As a therapist, I have to be on guard of feeling the same way about their progress. And I have to be careful about not communicating that discouraging mindset.
Because we are called to be hope bearers.
Several years ago, I developed a coping strategy for enduring the eternal transition from winter to spring. On March 1st I start to wake up the hope of spring by playing “I spy” with something I call the lime green haze.
Every day while I’m driving around town or on our country road or staring out the kitchen window, I look for the soft fuzzy beginnings of leaves in the treetops, the faintest color of hope.
It may take awhile. I look and look and it usually takes several weeks before the solid evidence of change materializes.
Actively choosing to hope for something I can’t see yet, lifts the grayness of spirit and brightens my eyes. All before I can actually prove spring is on the way. And when the halo of green finally appears, it’s like I can suddenly breathe again. This is the usual way of growth and change and transformation.
Sometimes hope hides just inside the shell of a bleak exterior.
Although a lack of concrete progress can wear us down, the hard of work of seasonal change accumulates in the darkness under the earth, within seeds, in the marrow of branches.
May we consider this same truth for our students or clients. Let’s practice a “just around the river bend” kind of hope that defies data collection numbers and progress note percentages.
Sometimes what looks like a plateau may just be a place to catch a breath.
Look for the lime green haze in those you work with today. Celebrate the tiny shoots of green that signal larger change to come.
Be a hope bearer.
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