“This could change my life,” I thought. I held a newly released medication in my hands and, for the first time in years, I felt hope
I’ve had chronic migraines since I was 8. I’ve tried a lot of treatments, but disappointment after disappointment has made it difficult to muster up enough hope to try something new.
A few years ago, I got to the point where there wasn’t anything left to try.
It actually wasn’t that disappointing. When you’ve been repeatedly let down by what you’ve hoped in, your ability to hope shrinks until it’s replaced by numbness.
Sometimes, something can rekindle that hope. For me, it was a breakthrough in migraine treatment.
And this time, with the new and innovative regimen, it’s actually different. I have less pain, and I am so thankful.
But the thing is, even though I’m in less pain, this “wonder drug” didn’t take away the other sources of stress and exhaustion in my life.
Hard things have happened since I began the new medication, and having less pain doesn’t make them any easier. The lack of pain gives me a greater capacity to deal with stress, but it can’t make up for everything else I’m experiencing.
When you expect something to fix all your problems, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Even if things are somehow perfect in one area of life, there will always be problems in other areas.
So what’s the point of hope if you’ll inevitably be disappointed? I think the reason hope is so universal is that we’re made to hope and for hope; we’ve just been doing it wrong.
We’ve been setting our sights too low.
Deep down, we all have big hopes. We want our lives to mean something. We want to make a difference. We want to find love that’s better than what’s in storybooks. We want to be deeply happy.
I think that our hopes aren’t just big — they are God-sized. Only God is big enough to fulfill God-sized hopes.
So, how can you hope again when you’ve been disappointed? Instead of looking to the people and things around you to fulfill your hopes, take them to God. Read more here about how to talk to God about anything you’re facing.
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