Endurance, Courage, Love & Hope Quotes for Messy Chapters
Looking for a bit of lightness in the heavy, world on fire, cynical landscape that is modern 2020s culture? While I recommend these inspirational hope quotes ‘for messy chapters,’ it is with the understanding that all of the chapters are messy. Hahaha. Whether you are muddling through a challenging conflict, crisis, relationship, loss, transition, diagnosis, betrayal, or other messy chapter, you’re certainly not alone. All of life is a mixed jumble of messy love, beauty, and heartache. Here’s a collection of words (a few quotes straight from the heart) to spark new thought or a less jaded outlook.
Hello Lovely – Hope Quotes, Encouragement & Reflections Along the Journey
Hope Quotes & Muddling Through Messy Chapters
“A wise part of me knows how to live the questions, allow paradox, and listen to less wise parts muttering beneath the soul’s breath. Knows how to carry longing to the bees, questions to the moon, and love to the trees. To sweep hopelessness from floors in sildent unknowing. To ease heartache with black keys and minor chords where a wobbly voice may sing.” (MICHELE, Hello Lovely)
The words in my quote above reveal more about me than I can say. I’m like you. My heart is soft and consequently, prone to ache.
“Peaceful living is not about seeking immunity from heartache and difficulty. It rarely looks quiet or bland. Overwhelm and chaos feel loud and messy. Growth, loss, and surrender bring pain. Peace blooms alongside the hurt as mysterious fullness, as buoyant aliveness, as uncommon beauty.” (MICHELE, Hello Lovely)
It takes intention and centering to keep coming home to beauty and love. (And time at the piano or journaling SAVES me time and time again!)
“Keep calm and carry a song. (It’s okay to forget the words.)” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
Encouragement from Inspirational Hope Quotes
Hopelessness can take quite a toll on our physical bodies. Any health journey needs to address it. (Not that hope is going to cure us. Goodness. This chronically ill blogger isn’t delusional!)
“I am always surprised by people who speak of faith as if it happens in the air somewhere. Our bodies are God’s best way of getting to us. Revelation begins in the flesh.” BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR
Hope is not just for bleeding hearts or religious types. I see it as fierce resistance to a barrage of untruths and ignorance coming at me.
“Hope…it is entered always and only through surrender, that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to.” CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT
When I’m downhearted, I’m prone to believe such lies. In a sense, my options seem to shrink to simply this or that.
“We do not know what’s coming. Life is beautiful anyway.” CHRISTINA BALDWIN
The brain loves duality, and the ego is quick to feel attacked or victimized.
“In plumbing deeply the hidden rootedness of the whole where all things are held together in the Mercy, we are released from the grip of personal fear and set free.” CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT
Words to Steady You If You Struggle
What do I need to become open to? Fresh hope flowing from an infinite source of possibilities and goodness. What Cynthia Bourgeault calls the Mercy.
“Despair is a disruption of trust–our own trust in the universe and in our own capacity to deal with that universe. We no longer trust that the way we do things, the way that we see the world, will help us move forward.” MARY PIPHER
Is hope simply one more coping mechanism?
“Hope creates an alternative consciousness with new vision that is not one-directional.” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
It feels more generative than that.
“Hope…when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life–a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.” CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT
I like the idea of it as a place we may enter, not merely a verb, not merely an escape…but new territory…a brand new landscape.
“Magic happens everyday in a million little ways.” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
Love and Soulful Quotes for Tender Hearts
I have also learned it’s a waste of time and energy to beat myself up when I’m all out of hope; when seeds of doubt or the occasional pity party arrive.
“Hope…the mysterious plenitude to live into action what our ordinary hearts and minds could not possibly sustain.” CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT
As long as I am (1) willing to be a witness to what is happening to me internally and
“Sometimes very natural energies like sadness, anger, frustration, shame and guilt, even feelings of hopelessness and despair, even profound longings for home, just want to move in us, express in us, have their being in us! But we don’t allow them. We’ve forgotten how to trust all of life’s energies.” JEFF FOSTER
(2) willing to notice the flow of emotions and physical sensations in my body? I can deal. Even the willingness to say or think the words I CAN DEAL is a huge step in the right direction.
“Waiting is overrated. Start fresh. Let go of the hurt. Say the things. Trust the trustworthy. Forgive yourself.” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
Learning to Trust Your Inner Wisdom
Disappointment swoops in. I sense it deeply, feel drained of hope and energy, and may temporarily believe I am all alone.
“This is one superpower of being old: You know that things are probably going to work out without your tense, controlling input.” ANNE LAMOTT
The mess arrives, and I allow it to wash over me while knowing I will return to my senses as a fiercely strong believer in myself and in hope.
“Keep a green tree in your heart, and perhaps the singing bird will come.” CHINESE PROVERB
So is hope just a strategy to help us cope?
“It’s always too soon to give up.” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
It seems to me it is this intimate relationship I have with hope that is important. I don’t see hope as one more coping mechanism like a warm bath or new candle.
“Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us.” CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT
Choosing Hope & Choosing Fullness
Hope is a field I have learned to count trustworthy, and I can point to places along the journey where my entrance toward it changed the trajectory.
“One of the quickest paths to an open heart is to recognize how much courage it takes to live a life. Any life. To choose to see that courage in others. And to choose to see it in ourselves.” ANDREA GIBSON
From my experience, when hope is absent, when my messy chapter involves scarcity, unrest, or uncertainty, I have a choice.
“Oh let me live in awe, in wonder as the precious unforever blooms.” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
I can remain inside a field of temporary thoughts and sensations where fear and hurt are very much alive.
“I have stopped running from shadowy places within me (even shaky, fearful, wounded voices). What they need is attention and my nurturance. Not unlike a parent answering a needy infant’s cry with reassuring love. Light touches them. They are seen, heard, and acknowledged as real.” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
Or I can move toward hope, with baby steps if necessary, trusting that a source of infinite goodness remains even when clouded by hopelessness.
“Hope is not an escape from reality but a daring entrance into spaciousness, into Mystery’s seedbed of the New.” MICHELE, Hello Lovely
Personal Growth, Spiritual Awakening & Hope Quotes
Right where I am, HOPE feels less like a strategy to undo despair and more like a shimmering reminder of my hidden wholeness. Nothing done to me can diminish such wholeness, and I long to live out of it more and more.
“If you can do this, you must. And I believe you can. I believe you can stop betraying yourself and I believe you can oversome the thing that is breaking you and I believe you can learn to love yourself better than anyone ever has and I believe you can start being your own hero and I believe in the dreams you’ve never told anyone and I believe in another try and another and another. So, please. Please stop telling yourself this is not for you–this bigger life. We need you. You need you. And if you can do this (and you can), you must. LAURA McKOWEN
Peace to you right where you are.
-michele
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