This Week on Soul Talks
It can be scary and intimidating to hope. In fact, we often shrink ourselves and our lives in fear of disappointment. If we hope and things don’t turn out well, we can feel lost, sad, or like our faith isn’t strong enough.
But in the waiting, God is doing great things. When you go out on a limb in hope, the Lord meets you there. Even if your hopes don’t pan out like you thought, you can fall back into the loving arms of Jesus!
In this Soul Talk, Bill and Kristi inspire your hope in Christ. Listen in and be encouraged by the better life our Savior creates for you, your family, and the people you care for.
Resources for this episode:
Taking Courage to Hope Transcript
Bill & Kristi Gaultiere
Bill
Hello friends, welcome to Soul Talks, where we elevate conversations for intimacy with Jesus and soul friendship.
So glad to have you as our friends to have you in this community.
Thanks for listening.
Last week, as you know, we talked about hope and many of you appreciated that and we just wanted to continue the conversation.
Kristi and I had another Soul Talk, personally, privately, about this and we thought, “Hey, let’s just carry that on with you [the Soul Talks Audience].
So, Kristi, you were sharing with me about your challenges with hoping.
That it’s a struggle for you to really live into this message that we’re talking about.
Kristi
Well, it is because I have experienced so much disappointment.
So there’s still this defense mechanism in me that wants to guard against disappointment.
And as I was thinking more about it, I think it’s because I don’t feel confident at times that somebody’s really gonna be there for me and my disappointment.
That somebody would want to be there for me and my disappointment.
That somebody really would offer me patient empathy, compassion, love, presence and restoration for me in my disappointment.
Because, in my disappointment, I think I feel shame.
I feel shame for having the need.
I feel shame for having negative emotions and I want to even protect somebody else from that negative emotion.
It’s like, I don’t even wanna have to come into the light to share that I’m so disappointed.
Judging and Shaming Yourself Makes It Hard To Have Hope
Bill
Yeah.
So you’re saying this as someone who’s very sensitive and a very deep feeler with your emotions.
And sometimes you feel overloaded with distress and you’re afraid that that would burden somebody else.
And you’re not only just trying to protect yourself, but you’re trying to protect other people from you having lots of negative emotions.
If you hope too much, you then get too disappointed.
Kristi
Yeah. And then I even will judge myself for being disappointed in God.
That also will cause me to pull away and withdraw from the comfort that anyone could give me.
Because I’m hiding.
The truth is, I feel disappointed that God didn’t answer my prayer of faith or what I hoped he would do, he didn’t do.
Bill
So it sounds like judging or shaming yourself is another thing that makes it hard for you to hope.
Because if you hope and get disappointed, then you’re liable to judge your faith as not being that strong enough.
Kristi
Or that I’m just silly because I wanted that outcome.
And that I’m just not strong enough in my faith.
I’m not righteous enough to just be satisfied with my hope in God.
I’m having all this disappointment that my expectations or my hopes or what I really believed and have faith that God would do, he didn’t do in that way.
Bill
Sometimes you feel like all your hopes ought to be about things that are holy or somehow advancing God’s kingdom or helping other people.
And none of your hopes should be about things that are important to you, personally.
Kristi
Right.
Bill
Things that would bless you.
Kristi
Yeah!
I’ll feel shame over feeling the disappointment and even the emotions that I know, in my head, are just a part of grieving the loss.
But in that sense of hopelessness that I’m feeling or disappointment that I’m feeling in the circumstance where my hope was dashed.
I tend to judge myself!
Hope Requires Courage
Bill
As if you had been selfish to hope for that personal blessing.
Even though within that you’re hoping in God.
And the larger picture is that you’re a disciple of Jesus.
In all the things that you experience in life, you’re seeking to grow to be more like Jesus, but that sort of gets lost in the feeling of disappointment.
Then you’re prone to judging yourself by saying, “Well, I hoped for something that wasn’t really a Godly thing to hope for.”
One of the main things you’re saying is that when you hope, the letdown, the distress, the negative emotions that will come if the hope is not fulfilled; that’s why you’re guarding against it.
Even though you’ve experienced empathy many times in your life, it’s hard to keep going back to that well.
Kristi
It is.
I think that there’s just, I don’t have this ultimate sense of confidence and courage that it takes to hope.
Sometimes.
Bill
Somewhere inside there’s a little girl that’s insecure or afraid, who feels alone.
And it feels like she’s got too many emotions and she’s too needy, or she’s gonna be a bother to people.
So the feeling is there lurking in the background.
Kristi
Yeah.
And so I’ve got to protect other people from that.
Even if that would include hoping they would be there for me if I needed them.
Bill
So what helps you move forward with hope?
“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength” (Isaiah 40).
And you do hope.
I see you extend yourself in hope.
And I see you join with hopes that I have in different areas, whether it’s with the family or our Soul Shepherding ministry.
Kristi
Well, that is one of the things that helps me hope.
It helps me to be around somebody who is hoping.
Because I’m taking courage from their courage.
Hope Is Infectious
Bill
Hope is infectious.
Isn’t it?
It’s like the “good virus” that C.S. Lewis talks about.
Kristi
Yeah, there are times when maybe I don’t feel the hope, but I see that you do, or somebody else does, and that can inspire and encourage me to hope.
Scripture, as I said in our last episode, also can be helpful to me in hope.
Also, when somebody listens to my disappointment and helps me process through my expectation and my grief and offers me empathy, then that can help me restore hope again;
Orient myself toward hope again.
As I process all that negative emotion, if I’m emotionally honest with myself, God, and the person who is listening, then actually, I get free of those negative emotions.
Bill
Over the years, one of the things that has really helped me with hope is listening to so many people.
Many are afraid to hope.
In some cases, they’ve shrunk their life out of the fear of being disappointed.
So helping them work that through—helping them come to a place of taking the risk of hoping— has helped me.
Knowing that sometimes you will be disappointed, but sometimes you won’t be.
And the fact that sometimes you won’t be, makes it worth going through the disappointment.
If you don’t hope you’re gonna miss out on a lot of good stuff, but if you do hope you’re gonna get a lot of good stuff and you’re gonna get some disappointment.
When you think about it, logically, it’s way better to hope.
But that also has to be worked through emotionally; Through relationships, like we’re talking about.
Seeing that in people has reinforced my own tendency to be someone who has ideals to strive for and to pray for.
And to be someone who puts hope in God, in different situations.
I think that the big test for me goes back many years to my dream to be a bestselling author.
When the Lord led me to put that on the altar.
And not write any more books unless God would ask me to at some point.
And to join you in authoring the lives of our three kids and just pour my life into being a father, and into my work as well.
Through just loving my neighbor and not trying to be on a big stage and all that.
And through that process I experienced a lot of waiting, rejection, and disappointment.
And discovering that even where I had an unfulfilled hope with that dream, that what God had for me was actually much better.
Not only better from the standpoint of eternity but better for my soul, even today.
That sort of inoculated me because of all those years of waiting and not pursuing that dream and being happy anyway–seeing all the good that God was doing in my life.
That sort of inoculated me against disappointment.
I thought if I can go through that and survive, and know that I’m loved and have a meaningful life and be happy, I can handle other rejections, failures, or disappointments where my hope is not fulfilled.
Because I’ve experienced the goodness of God down to the depths of a situation that was really a bummer for me.
Finding God’s Goodness In The Midst of Loss
Kristi
One of your biggest hopes in life for yourself was that you would be able to really make a huge impact for God as a writer and to do that in the form of a published book.
When that dream didn’t come true for you, that was a huge desolation of your hope.
Bill
Yeah. Because that hope goes back to being a teenager.
Discovering that I had this gift of writing that God had given me and being so blessed by spiritual writers, like A.W. Tozer, and Thomas à Kempis.
I had this burning desire that developed in me, that I understood as being from God, that I would write.
And that it would help people in their intimacy with God, and in their soul, and the things that mattered most of them.
It was just a big part of my identity.
Then going down that path in my late twenties and early thirties, and then coming to that stopping point, it was a lot of waiting and a lot of hope deferred.
But it was also learning other hopes that developed in the midst of that deferment.
Hopes that were actually more robust and significant.
At the end of the day, I still had this life dream that was on hold.
I felt like I had failed.
I felt the hope that wasn’t being fulfilled.
And I felt that I wasn’t gonna get to write for 15 years.
15 years is a long time to wait for something.
Finding God’s goodness in the midst of that loss, finding empathy from the Lord and from people helped me not only survive but thrive.
Looking back, it gave me the courage to start Soul Shepherding.
It gave me the courage to lean into this pivot, into growth as an organization and not be afraid of failing, not be afraid of being disappointed.
Because I know that well, if I get out there on that limb and it breaks, the Lord’s gonna catch me.
Or if he doesn’t catch me and I break some bones, those are going to get healed up.
And that’s all gonna be worked for my good and for the good of people around me that I can serve and love.
Finding the reality of God I would say, I discovered, yeah,
“Hope is an anchor for my soul.”
Even in the midst of this great hope, the greatest hope of my career probably, being just dashed and deferred for so many years.
I found out that hope is an anchor for my soul, and God is real. God is good to me. God is telling a story with my life that I get to be a part of.
This is an adventure I’m gonna go on. I’m gonna keep hoping.
Kristi
Even in the areas where your hope was dashed, where you were disappointed, where you didn’t get what you hoped for, you found hope for new things?
Bill
I found hope for new things.
Yes.
And I had the boldness and the willingness to risk.
Because I knew that if my hope didn’t get fulfilled and I was disappointed, or I felt like a failure, that I wasn’t going to be lost in shame, rejection, and despair, because there was empathy for me.
I worked that out through talking with counselors, talking with spiritual Directors, my relationship with you, and with friends through those years of doing that deep inner journey work from our model of the CHRIST stages.
And our book Journey of the Soul, lots of inner journey work, lots of admitting to the things that I’m feeling and learning how to benefit from someone listening to me and caring for me and praying for me.
I just know, down to my bones, that I’m actually not alone in this world.
Life Is Better With Hope
Bill
There are times I feel alone, but I’m not.
I can reach out and God will meet me in prayer, or God will meet me through somebody that will listen to me.
It’s worth it. It’s worth it to me to run and sometimes trip and fall.
It’s worth it to me because I know that so often there’s great things that come from running and winning the race or come from the running and falling.
And being met there in the fall.
Kristi
I’m thinking of you as an athlete.
I’m thinking of you when you were on the field as a younger man running towards the goal post and you’d get tackled.
Or somebody would steal the ball from you, you didn’t let that dash your hope or stop playing the game.
You’d get back up and you’d hope you could get a touchdown the next time or that you could run the ball the next time.
Bill
Yeah. Some of that probably is my nature being type “A” and determined.
Some of that probably is training in the world of sports.
Some of that is training in the world of spiritual formation and relationships, like we’ve been talking about.
But over the course of life, I’m pretty resolute. I’m gonna go for it.
When God brings a possibility that’s confirmed in prayer, and in Godly counsel, I’m gonna hope.
I’m gonna try.
I wanna do the same thing and take risks in my relationships as well because it is better to hope and sometimes be disappointed than not to hope.
When we hope there’s a door that opens to the good things that God wants to bring.
So whether it’s through the success of that hope being realized or it’s through the disappointment in the way God meets us, that’s the better life.
