Addicted to Hope

I wrote a few weeks ago about how I love to plan stuff. I wrote of how the color-y calendar gets me all excited and of the pretty plans that bring me a thrill like none other. And it’s all true, every word. Except I’ve found other thrills equally exciting, and I’m starting to notice a theme.

I love the essence of a library and all the pages waiting to be turned. The feel of Barnes and Noble and Books a Million in all of their orderly potential. The potential of all the new books I’ve not yet found, the ones I have yet to conquer.

I love a bright, clean unmarked notebook. You know, the sturdy, spiral kind that has fun little polka dots or big, bright daisies painted all over the cover. I especially love the ones with a folder inside, waiting to be filled with plans and quotations and who knows what.

I love a big, open horizon that touches the sky somewhere I feel like I just might get to. A huge expanse of farmland waiting to be planted. A wide blue ocean that collides with the sky.

I love the smell of my kids’ school hallways. The creativity radiating off those colorful bricks in shades of purple and green and brown and orange. All the potential of the not yet learned.

I love a big piece of untouched fabric. The wonder of what it might become.

I love a whole new day, unplanned as of yet. The anticipation of what I might do with the time that lay ahead. Oh, the possibilities that lay before me on a day such as that.

And as I found myself wandering yesterday amidst the books and the shelves of the library, yet again, I noticed a theme that ties all of my unorthodox loves together. I love to hope. I’m addicted to potential.

For there is something inside of who I am that needs the hope of the yet untouched, the potential of the newly created. That’s probably why I’m so in awe of the idea of God’s kind of all new. The new creation He made me and is still making me into, when I gave my life to Him. The fresh start He gives every. single. day.

So, the next time I find myself wandering around Barnes and Noble or JoAnn Fabrics, rather than wondering why I’m so impractical (for truly, I do not need one more untouched piece of fabric!), I will let myself dream in all kinds of colors. And I will remember that hope is a gift. From God Himself.