Hopelessness to Hope
It is very common to feel hopeless when your marriage is falling apart. Webster defines Hopeless as…
Feeling despair about something
Hopelessness is the result of being both physically and mentally spent, totally confused about what you feel, and the fear that nothing will ever change.
When you are physically and mentally spent you feel like you can’t try anymore, you can’t care anymore, you feel like you’ve invested all you can invest without getting anything in return. Once you reach that stage you become very confused. You want to try, but you feel your efforts will be a waste of time which brings us to fear. Fear that you will be alone, fear about changing your life, fear about how the kids will be impacted and the list goes on.
Hopelessness can be a devastating state of mind. If you are there, let me assure you, you don’t have to stay there. There are two sides to that statement because sometimes no matter what you do, the marriage still fails. But then, many times it doesn’t. I want to help with the latter.
How to Turn Hopelessness to Hope
Recognize that you really do want your marriage to survive.
If you care about the state of your marriage then you must want it to be better. If that’s the case then use that truth to change the way you see your marriage. See it as fixable, reconcilable, restorable.
Accept that you must forgive your spouse and forgiveness for yourself.
Forgiveness does not mean accepting, or justifying, or even forgetting. All it means is that you are releasing the debt owed for the offense. Why do that? Because no matter what they do, they will never be able to pay the debt anyway. And, trying to get even never evens up it only causes more damage. The same mindset applies to accepting forgiveness. We refuse to accept it because we think we don’t deserve it. In other words, we feel we need to repay our debt. That won’t happen so if forgiveness is offered, just accept it and the work on never doing again whatever it was you did.
Why this Turns Hopelessness to Hope
If you want your marriage to survive and you are willing to forgive your spouse and accept forgiveness for yourself there is hope that your marriage can be restored.
Steps 1 & 2 allow you to see even the smallest of improvements which will strengthen your hope and weaken your hopelessness. This is nothing new just check out what Isaiah said in Chapter 57 Verse 10,
“You were wearied with the length of your way, but you did not say, “It is hopeless”; you found new life for your strength, and so you were not faint.”
