And today we’re talking about hope. And I think hope is really about bringing the Lord back to the forefront, bringing heaven to the forefront, remembering these powerful spiritual experiences that we have. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about in today’s episode. But if you haven’t checked out Catholic mom mindset, I would encourage you to go do that cuz it’s pretty fun. All change begins with hope. In masters we have this step by step process called the mindset cycle. And it’s the steps that the brain goes through in order to change a mindset that you have. And we have an episode about that. So I’ll put that in the show notes about the steps of the mindset cycle. But as I was preparing for this and thinking about hope, I realized that kind of step zero before you even get into those steps is the darkness.

It’s suffering, it’s pain, it’s fear, and it’s doubt that actually is what comes first. So I’m calling that step zero and then the first step in the mindset cycle and really to any change is hope. We have to have hope that something can be better. You don’t need to even fully understand your current situation. You don’t need to know the step by step process for getting out of it. It starts with hope. And of course our hope comes from the Lord. He gives it to us and it is always about him and his goodness. And so I want you to think about where you might be at step zero, where you might have some suffering, some darkness, some confusion, some hopelessness, some pain, some doubt, some fear. It’s not hard for us to think about one or many areas of our life where we’re experiencing this. Ugh Lord, I just don’t know what to do. Feel so terrible.

Then I want you to know that when you are in that situation, all you have to do is to light the candle of hope. And you can actually light a candle, which I often like to do because it kind of snaps me out of it and it draws me in and it makes me feel like I’m sitting with the Holy Spirit. But you could do it metaphorically in your mind too. You can even imagine hearing the the sound Lighting a match and it Having fire and then lighting a candle. And that’s the first step to get out of the darkness, is to have hope. I believe that things could get better. It is the first step and if you do not have hope, if you do not believe that things are going to get better, they probably won’t or it will be harder and longer to go on whatever journey you need to go on. So step one is having hope and you can just pray for it. You can just say, Lord, I need some hope. My hope comes from you. And again, you don’t need to see your situation clearly or how to get out of it to just light the candle.

And for those of you who have been praying for something for a long time or you’re in a very painful season, I think one of the biggest fears that we have is that God will not answer our prayers or he will not answer them in the time that we want him to answer those prayers. And so I wanna remind you that our ultimate hope is for heaven. And man, there are times when I really don’t like that answer, right? If you’re in the middle of a challenging season and you encounter a chirpy happy woman on the internet and she’s like, offer it up. Remember the world’s thy ship. It’s not our home, You’re made for heaven. That can just be maddening sometimes. But when you are sitting in the dark of pain and doubt and fear and somebody comes up to you with great love and says, you know what, I see that you are in the darkness and I want you to have hope that you are for heaven. And then if I offered you two choices, if I said, you know in box number one, God snaps his fingers and fixes this thing that you’re going through right now in the way that your brain thinks it needs to be fixed and in box two is heaven with him for eternity, which would you choose? And if you were calm and if you felt safe, and if you felt loved, you would choose box number two every time. That sounds very different, doesn’t it then offer it up. You were made for heaven.

And so I like to ask myself this when I’m, I’ve been praying for something for a long time and I feel like God is not answering it and it’s been a long time, whatever that means for you. Like it could mean that you’re on day seven of kids throwing up in your house or it could mean you’re on, you know, year 22 of a difficult marriage, but you feel like, gosh, Lord, this has been a long time and I want you to imagine getting to choose the two boxes. And he says, okay, I can fix this problem for you right now the way that you want or you can trust me and know that you are on the path to sainthood right now. Our ultimate hope is for heaven and we don’t deserve it and it is not guaranteed we deserve the pains of eternal hell. But it is only because of God’s goodness and his grace and his mercy and his passion that we have the hope of heaven. You do have the hope of heaven, just requires repentance and belief in the Lord. And so if you are sitting in the darkness on anything you can just pray, Lord, help me light the candle of hope, give me some light. Hope is always the beginning of change.

And if you do not have hope about a specific situation, you can always hope for heaven and know that it is the ultimate thing that you want. I have such a deep desire for sainthood and to lead my family to sainthood. And I want that so much more than the things that I worry about.

God knows your heart. He gave you the desires of your heart and he will fulfill them. And the deepest desire of your heart is to be with him in eternity forever. And if you knew that he was going to fulfill that desire, then how would you think about what’s going on around you? Likewise, I think it’s very powerful to say if right now we knew you were not on track to spend eternity with God and how would that change how you’re showing up to the things around you? The world is a noisy place and it is purposefully trying to distract you from the Lord, but have hope my friends, that any time you want you can light a candle in the darkness. And that is the beginning of change in that mindset cycle that we teach. The next phase after hope is awareness. Awareness of where you’re at. You have to know where you’re at and where you want to go in order to begin to change. If you only know where you want to go but you don’t know where you’re at, it will be difficult to create a plan.

If you only know where you’re at and you don’t know where you want to go, it will also be difficult to make a plan. So awareness is important of both where you’re at and where you want to go. But it is very difficult to have awareness in the dark without hope. The mass readings this weekend, which will be for the second weekend of Advent, they say in Romans chapter 15, brothers and Sisters, whatever was written previously was written for our instruction that by endurance and by the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. It is so easy for me to sit in drama about things I think are going wrong, but I love this call.

He’s basically saying the Bible and of course he doesn’t mean the catechism, but that gets added in there too, right? The Bible and the catechism was written for your instruction that by endurance and encouragement of the scriptures, you might have hope. We can have hope because of the scriptures and the mass that we go to every week always has the scriptures. And I know for those of us with the toddler crowd, we don’t always hear them, but I would encourage you to read them before or read them after, soak them up because the scriptures will give you encouragement so that you may have the endurance you need to run this race.

It goes on to say, may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to think in harmony with one another in keeping with Jesus Christ, that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He’s saying, do this together. You guys are in harmony together. I want you to, to read the scriptures and to keep with Christ. Our hope can be renewed every Sunday that we go to mass and we hear these scriptures. And again, if you don’t hear them, that is totally fine, read them before or after, but make it a practice because it is not by accident that these scriptures have been chosen, that you need to hear them this weekend, that you need to hear them as many times as you’re gonna hear them throughout your life. Because being Christian, believing in Christ is just a great deal of remembering, having spiritual moments, big spiritual conversions and experiences. And then the world gets loud and it fades into the background. And we are called to remember to bring it back to the forefront to remember that we were made for heaven and to encourage each other.

This weekend, I want you to, as you’re talking to your friends or your family, just choose one person and say, you’re doing a really good job. I see you, you are really trying to live out your Catholic faith. Just encourage them. I don’t know who that person will be and why they need to hear that that day, but you can trust that the Holy Spirit will move you to know who you should do that for. And you may not get to know why. You may not get to know what they’re going through that they need that kind of encouragement, but let us be encouraging to each other. I think about when this was written and that it was so dangerous to be Christian and that they had to write these letters to each other and pass them underground and this is what he chose to say.

And he said, I want you guys to think in harmony with one another and keep with Jesus Christ. That’s why these scriptures were written. So let’s celebrate that. Let’s celebrate that we are Catholics who are held together by Christ and reminded of what he has done for us with these scriptures and that we can encourage each other so that we have more endurance for this race. You cannot have endurance without hope. Hope always comes first. So I’m praying for you. I’m praying for you that if you are in darkness in any part of your life, that you may find hope that God sends you, hope that you will strike a match and light that candle. It is the first step to change. I want you to know that you can have hope without seeing the plan. You can trust in God’s goodness and that our ultimate hope is for heaven.

And if that does not feel good, just sit with it until it does. Just really sit with it until you see that actually it is the thing that you desire the most will be the most satisfying and it is the deepest longing of your soul, the Made for greatness. Family is praying for all of you. Advent is a special time for us and we slow down and we spend more time in prayer. And we pray for all of the women who listen to this podcast and all of the women in our programs. We really pray for you. And that is powerful. And we are so blessed that you are part of this community. The world offers you comfort, but you are not made for comfort. You are Made for Greatness.