Anchorage

Throughout the twenty- two years of my life I’ve heard the word “Hope” as it’s been thrown around in conversation, written down in a story, or talked about as a genuine emotion. I used to think I understood hope, that I could explain it and identify it in a moment’s passing as something that yearns to be caught when it’s placed close to us. I used to think I understood it as this overwhelming sense of peace and calming that washed over a person during their darkest moments; a type of restoration technique for body and soul. I’m twenty- two years old and just now figuring out that I didn’t really know anything about hope at all. It’s been a word I myself have thrown around, one I see and continually reiterate in the mission statement with Heart Support, but it was simply a fleeting notion, until this week when I actually began to sit down and pour over some of what it is that we offer to the students that write into us each day.

As Heart Support is a Christian organization I began to really attempt to utilize my resources and understand the full and true meaning of hope as it applies to what we do. The Bible emphasizes hope to be an anchor, one that grounds and stabilizes the foundation which a kingdom is built. The Bible holds that God is the anchor, the one to plant us firm with purpose and a sense of peace. He is to be the driving force for the steps we take forward and the paths that lives may take those who believe in all He is. That passage in Hebrews really stuck with me as I began to think back to an earlier entry I wrote, “Hands & Feet” and for me hope became more than just this one word people throw around for the sake of language.

As a team, we’re meant to do three things: ground the message, ground the community, and ground each other. Therefore, like the Bible says that hope becomes the anchor to center each moment of uncertainty, so too do we, as His hands and feet, become the anchors of even greater story. Those who believe in Christianity adhere to the fact that the community is intended to live the life that Christ has envisioned, guiding people closer to his Kingdom and toward understanding the world from that sense of perspective. I’ve begun to understand how vital my role is as a member of this team. I’m not just an intern, not just a student trying to learn or another college kid. Instead, I’m someone who is necessary in order to provide those who come to us each week with information, with community, with fellowship, and sometimes with answers as they go through these challenging situations of life.

Is it hard for me sometimes when a person writes in about addiction, asking for counsel from a Christian perspective, and asking to utilize resources? Of course. Is it hard for us as a team when someone writes in about their difficult home life and the struggles that they are having in those times of their lives? Of course, it’s never an easy situation to handle. It’s those moments that are the pivotal ones toward attempting to be the anchors for the students that follow us and have begun to join this community and share their stories. For each of them their struggles often times bind them to the present, but through our organization we’re meant to be the people that can begin to speak into their lives and restore them back to the relationship and understanding they had with Him.

What does this all have to do with my initial impressions of hope? Simple. It’s changed. No longer is hope just a meaning, just an intangible but present emotion that seems to sweep us when we’re not quite prepared, but for us hope is a mission. Hope is to believe that we our beliefs have to offer and what our stories have to share will help to spread the truth of the faith we believe. Hope is simply being the person on the other side of a computer screen who makes it a point to take that email, write back, and say “yes, we do want to help you through this.” Hope, as I’ve recently begun to discover both personally and through the experience of others, is the nature of being connected to this mission not for the fame and notoriety that it may or may not receive, but to be the guiding light that attempts to go through the same journey of faith and understanding that our followers are experiencing. It’s a partnership and each of us is committed to meeting wherever the trail is left.

Reclaim. Restore. Rise Above.