Re•building joy and choosing hope

Sometimes Re•building joy can focus on the "building" parts. How quickly have these first two months of 2012 flown by? At first it was easy to schedule time in for quiet hikes and sunlit moments in a park. But then it was time to tour charter schools, since I've become passionate about their different style of learning. And then my kids got into a great one (but only if we jumped immediately) and we had to change schools suddenly last week. Wow, chaos is constantly encroaching, isn't it?
I'm still here though, still always chewing on this idea of "re•building joy". Not just "choosing joy", because I have to acknowledge that mine was there and then was depleted, stolen, crushed, lost - whatever you want to call it. And in my case, choosing just to be happy might ignore some pretty important points. So now I am focusing heavily on choosing HOPE as I re•build my "container" of JOY.
Last night I looked back at the beginning of my current journal. I started it about 2 weeks before G came to our home. And I KNEW KNEW KNEW that a baby was coming soon. I was telling people... I kept writing that I was going to "CHOOSE HOPE" (yes, in my journal it was all in caps, too)
Somehow that thought has been here this past two years... That I have to choose hope. I've been thinking... There are two options I have: 1- to not hope anymore. That leaves me hopeless, and if I even bother to pray or wish for things, then I am coming from a place where my only "hope" is that I can perhaps manipulate things to go my way by sheer force or willpower. Quite frankly, that sounds horrible and exhausting.
Option #2 - hope. It's foolish, right? To have been beaten down and kicked to the breaking point and to decide that I believe the future is better.
It's Black History month and I love to address that in my personal life. I've spent this month looking at the art of Romare Bearden and I have a half-read (much highlighted) copy of some of the most powerful speeches and writings of Martin Luther King Jr. in my pile of books... I marvel at the hope MLK had. Why would he believe things would/could change? Wasn't that foolish? How foolish was Nelson Mandela to sit in a prison for decades and to not only decide not to hate, but to hope? Foolish, right? Or beautiful and brave? How foolish was Rosa Parks to decide one day her bus ride might change things for an entire nation? Or is it NOT foolish to hope? Maybe it's brave and wise?
I think hope is scary.
I also think choosing NOT to hope is even scarier, no matter how foolish the choice may appear.

What that looks like, I don't know. But trust me, I am leaping at even the smallest opportunities I have for choosing hope. I think they will show me the way. These are the days where re•building takes work... But I'm not really the type to give up easily.