I’ve seen posts going around this week cautioning us against making claims that 2021 will be the best year ever! And suggesting that we might jinx ourselves.
But I just can’t buy into that mindset because being a messenger of hope and healing is at the heart of everything I do.
One of my all-time favorite movies is “The Shawshank Redemption,” which is a movie about a group of men in prison but at its core – it is really a movie about hope and how dangerous it can feel at certain times in our lives. And that it really ought to be the baseline from which we operate.
For me, hope is daring to believe in something bigger and better than what we are experiencing in the present or have experienced in the past. Hope is dangerous and radical at its core. And it is absolutely necessary to personal growth and spiritual development.
I have known for a few years that God was calling me to care for the souls of partners of sex addicts. For several of those years, however, I wasn’t ready or willing or able. Because I had not yet reached the place in my own journey where I could not only have hope for myself but also for those whom I called to serve – who can’t.
The fall of 2019 was when I really to accept God’s call and there was the moment when my husband and I were in the Bay Area, which I believe is a deeply mystical place where the veils are thin, and I was standing in the bathroom in our corporate hotel suite and I heard very clearly, “You are a messenger of hope and healing.”
That message is at the core of all the work that I do – with private clients, with groups, on social media, on podcasts, in blog posts, on whatever platform I find myself on. At the core whatever I am saying is this message, “There is always hope. There is always healing.” And for those of you who can’t feel that truth yet, then I hold it for you until you can.
I’ll close with one of my favorite quotes about hope. The quotes is from Barbara Kingsolver and I have carried in my heart for more than 20 years:
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope , running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.”
Here’s to hope and healing in the New Year!
xoxo, Jenni