The Humiliation of Hope

I recently went to the doctor for my yearly exam, which is something I do not enjoy because I am a human being with a pulse.

As I sat there in the sterile waiting room on a sad chair with the smell of chemical cleanser in the air, I pretended to look at my phone while also casually wondering whether I am fine, dying, dehydrated, perimenopausal, or simply living inside a body long enough to know that any waiting room with fluorescent lighting can become a spiritual test.

Even five minutes feels too long because you know what comes next. You are about to get naked, put on a paper gown, and have a stranger examine the most intimate parts of you while making cheerful conversation about traffic, weather, or their kid’s soccer game so everyone can pretend the whole arrangement is less absurd than it is.

Oh, and we pay money for this experience.

Sitting there, half anxious, half irritated, and mostly naked, I realized I recognized this feeling. The excruciating period of time known as the waiting.

We have done what we are supposed to do, shown up, answered the questions, filled out the forms, followed the instructions, and still have no idea what the verdict will be. Our body sits in one room while our mind runs through every possible outcome. We try to remain calm while some larger answer forms somewhere outside our control.

That is how this whole season of my life has felt.

I am in a waiting room I have outgrown, and the sad chairs and bad lighting seem even more offensive because I feel like I am twenty-five months pregnant with a life that refuses to be born.

I can feel the baby of my new life kicking forcefully every day, which makes the waiting feel intolerable. I can feel the life I’m stepping into pressing against the edges of the life I’m still living. I’m ready for the waiting room door to swing open after years of standing in hallways, making meaning out of delays, almosts, near misses, and locked doors.

I know I have to keep trusting.

And this is where it starts to feel humiliating.

If you’ve been trusting for what feels like a lifetime, it starts to feel embarrassing after enough disappointment. At first, trust feels beautiful and expansive, almost elegant. You believe, surrender, do the work, keep your heart open, and convince yourself your greatest desires are on their way because some part of you genuinely knows this to be true.

But after a while, if enough things do not arrive, or arrive and leave, or almost arrive and then vanish into some silence you are expected to metabolize with grace, trust begins to feel less like wisdom and more like proof that you still have not learned your lesson.

Hope starts to feel foolish, and faith feels like standing in public in a paper gown.

I think we’ve misunderstood hope.

Our culture loves hope after it has been rewarded. We celebrate the entrepreneur who almost gave up before building the company. The couple who almost didn’t meet. The actor who spent years hearing “no” and nearly quit before becoming an overnight success. Once the miracle arrives, we call them resilient and inspiring.

What we rarely talk about is the person who is still waiting. The one who has done the work, stayed open, risked disappointment again and again all while life hasn’t caught up to their soul yet.

Hope is beautiful in retrospect, but while you’re living inside it, it can feel almost undignified.

It takes a tremendous amount of vulnerability to keep believing in the life you have not yet been handed. It exposes something raw in us. It reveals that despite all our intelligence and lived experience, despite knowing opportunities fall through and timing can be brutal, some part of us is still willing to whisper, I know my life is going to meet me.

That is not naïve, but it can certainly feel that way. It is hard to keep trusting when trust has not always protected us. It is hard to keep believing in timing when timing has asked us to stay in seasons we were ready to leave years ago.

There are days when I do not want another lesson or invitation to trust the process. I’m not interested in another spiritual explanation for why the thing has not arrived yet. I want the life I’ve worked so hard for to stop hovering and land.

And still, beneath the anger, there is something in me that will never give up. I do not always know whether that is faith, stubbornness, devotion, or simply the last honest part of me refusing to become cynical.

Maybe hope is not confidence that everything will work out exactly the way I imagined. Maybe hope is refusing to let disappointment convince me that love isn’t real, my purpose doesn’t really matter, or that the life calling me forward was only ever a fantasy.

What if hope is sitting in the waiting room without mistaking the delay for the diagnosis?

I do not know when the door finally swings open.

I only know that I am still here, wearing the paper gown of hope.

If this resonated, feel free to tap the heart so I know it landed. And if you have a reflection, I’d love to hear what it stirred in you. Sharing it with someone who might need it is always appreciated. Thank you for being here. With gratitude, Kate

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