What is that fine line between maintaining hope and accepting reality? Why is hope important? How do you help someone accept their circumstance without taking away their hope?
It has been difficult dealing with my mom's illness. Reality has set in that she will not be with us for much longer. With this reality comes the balance between being open, honest and helping her to accept this. The difficulty is helping her to live whatever time she has left without being in despair.
We struggle between helping her to maintain hope and yet facing reality. Knowing that she needs to accept what is to come so she can have peace. While talking with my dad about this I started thinking about Hope. Are we truly looking at what it means to have hope, what does hope really mean? So I looked up the meaning of the word hope and this is what i found.
Hope is the emotional state which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the "feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best" or the act of "look[ing] forward to something with desire and reasonable confidence" or "feel[ing] that something desired may happen"
So what does hope mean? Having a positive outcome to events or circumstances. How do we help my mom to see the positive outcome to her circumstances? For the past 6 1/2 years her hope has been in positive outcomes to her treatments, medications, doctors appointments, lab results ect. How do we shift that thinking past cancer and what her life has been to a new hope of what her future life will be . How do we help her to change her thinking , to look forward with desire and reasonable confidence to her future.
My mom knows she will be in heaven and that death is not the end, it is only the end of this chapter. So we try helping her to re-focus hope, it is no longer in medication, treatments, or healing, even healing is temporary in this world. We encourage her to focus her hope on those things that are eternal, that will last forever. Please pray with us that God will help her to see her new hope, hope that comes with a positive outcome; Titus 1:2" In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began" . Our hope is not on a thing, a teatment or a doctor, it is not our life here on earth, our hope is GOD. Trusting and knowing that our eternity will be with him in heaven , knowing, looking forward to heaven where there will be no more pain, sickness, death, sadness, cancer, or tears! Giving her peace in knowing she has lived her life and been a testimony to God and that it has all been the road to her future hope.
Ps 39:7 And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.
