The Beautiful Daughters of Hope
David Freund, Chief Leadership Officer

I recently listened to a podcast and heard this statement, “The beautiful daughters of hope are anger and courage.” I was deeply moved by this statement and have spent some time considering its validity. The more I considered it, the more I came into agreement with it. Let’s take a look at three keywords.

Hope – Hope is defined as a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. I am certain that all of us are hopeful in many different areas. You may have also previously heard me say that hope is not a strategy. Hoping for something doesn’t change anything. Being hopeful is wonderful and may make us feel better in the short term, but it won’t impact the end result. There needs to be action or movement for our hopes to be realized. I can hope to have a better year in 2023 than I had in 2022, but if I don’t change anything in my life, 2023 will be a repeat of 2022.

Anger – Anger is defined as a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. I want to remove the hostility part of this definition because I don’t believe that anger always results in hostility. Anger that is not restrained or channeled in a healthy way will result in hostility, but it doesn’t need to. We even read in scripture, “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Anger can be a very positive emotion. The strong feelings of annoyance and displeasure can be the impetus that causes us to act. We see this play out when we are so uncomfortable with a situation that doing nothing is no longer an option.

Courage – Courage is defined as the ability to do something that frightens one. As my dad would say, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where something happens. We use the annoyance and displeasure of our anger to engage courage that pushes us out of our comfort zone and onto the path of change. The path of change is the only option that will lead us to what we hope for.

Recently I completed my year-end reflections. 2022 was an amazing year filled with many blessings and learning opportunities. I have documented my year with nine pages of notes. The hardest part of my reflection is distilling nine pages into a handful of actions that will really make 2023 an even better year. One area that jumped out at me was this statement – I need to be healthier in all areas of my life, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Hoping to be healthier in these areas won’t change a thing. Leveraging hope’s beautiful daughters will be the key. Leveraging the anger to engage my courage to act will be the key.