Making Space for Hope
I first came across the phrase “making space for hope” in an unexpected context. A defense attorney was describing his attempts at balancing candor with compassion in telling his client the truth about the gravity of their situation while still leaving room for the possibility that things could turn out better than expected. When I read those words, I wasn’t struck so much by the legal context, but by life itself.
Because the truth is, the daily weight of our experiences, the grief, the losses, the setbacks, the disappointments, can suffocate hope. Hope begins to feel like a luxury. Something too fragile to be trusted. Something that, if allowed in, risks reopening wounds that have barely healed. Sometimes hope feels painful.
Why? Because hope carries expectation. And if you’ve been let down repeatedly, if your prayers have gone unanswered, if your heart has been bruised over and over, the idea of hoping again feels almost cruel. It means making yourself vulnerable to possibility. It means believing that maybe, this time, things could be different.
And yet, something inside us still yearns for it. Even when hope has been beaten down or trampled on, there’s often the faintest flicker that refuses to be extinguished. That flicker is what keeps us trying again. It’s what whispers, “Maybe tomorrow will look different.” So the question becomes: how do we make space for hope, especially when life feels crowded with everything else like fear, grief, sadness, anger, or exhaustion?
I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve learned this:
Making space for hope is intentional. It doesn’t always come naturally. Sometimes it’s a choice to carve out a little corner of your heart where hope can rest, even if you’re not sure you believe it fully yet.
Making space for hope is gentle. It doesn’t mean forcing optimism or denying pain. It’s allowing yourself to say, “This is hard. This hurts. But maybe it won’t always feel this way.”
Making space for hope is courageous. Because hope is risky. But the alternative, a life closed off to the possibility of joy, healing, or change, is even harder to bear.
Hope is not naive. It is resilient. It is daring. And sometimes, it’s the most defiant thing we can do in the face of everything that tries to strip it away.
So today, I invite you, and I remind myself, to make space for hope. However small. However shaky it may feel. Because even in its most fragile form, hope has a way of rising again.