Finding Hope When All Hope Is Gone

These are the questions at the heart of Midnight Hallelujah: Why Hope Is Still Worth the Risk, and a conversation with author Ebie Hepworth on the UN Perfect podcast.

Ebie’s story isn’t about someone who discovered a formula for avoiding suffering. Quite the opposite. Her story has taken her through adoption, infertility, pregnancy loss, the miracle of twins, and the diagnosis of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in her son—a progressive, incurable disease. She knows what it is to live in what she calls a “midnight.” But she is practicing finding hope in the midst of it.

When Hope Doesn’t Look Like Getting What You Prayed For

One of the most difficult assumptions we can make about faith is that hoping in God means hoping for a particular outcome. We pray for healing, so we assume hope means believing the person will be healed. We pray for a child, so we assume hope means believing we’ll eventually hold one. We pray for reconciliation, so we assume hope means believing the relationship will be restored.

But what happens when the answer is no? What happens when the dream you’ve prayed for doesn’t come true? Eventually, we are forced to confront a difficult question:

Is finding hope still possible if God doesn’t give me what I hoped for?

That question changes everything. If we place our hope in an outcome, every unanswered prayer threatens our faith. Placing our hope in a person—God Himself—allows us to grieve an outcome without losing our anchor. This doesn’t mean we stop wanting good things. It doesn’t mean we pretend disappointment doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean we call suffering good.

It means we learn to distinguish between hoping in God and hoping that God will do exactly what we want.

Those are not the same thing.

Grieving With God Instead of Moving Past Grief

We don’t have to clean up our emotions before bringing them to God. We don’t have to make our prayers sound spiritual. We don’t have to hide anger, disappointment, confusion, or exhaustion. We can tell God the truth.

• “I am angry.”
• “I don’t understand.”
• “I don’t want this.”
• “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”
• “God, I believe you’re good, but I don’t understand how this can possibly be good.”

That isn’t a failure of faith. It can actually be an expression of intimacy. There is a difference between whining and weeping. Whining demands that circumstances change according to our wishes. Weeping brings our real pain into the presence of someone we trust.

God doesn’t need the polished version of us. He wants the real version. You cannot heal what you refuse to reveal.

The Hope Helix: Four Practices for Finding Hope in the Midnight

1. Grieve With God

Before you can move forward, you may need to acknowledge what has been lost. Name it. Say what hurts. Cry. Lament. Stop pretending that something didn’t matter simply because you can’t change it. Grief isn’t evidence that you’ve lost your faith. Often, grief is what happens when something mattered deeply. Bring that grief to God.

2. Contend With God

Contending means praying—even when prayer feels difficult. It means continuing the conversation. Not because you have figured everything out, but because you haven’t. The Psalms are full of this kind of prayer. They contain questions, complaints, fear, anger, longing, worship, and trust. Real prayer doesn’t require us to pretend. The most honest prayer is the most faithful one.

3. Await God

Waiting for an outcome is different from awaiting God. We spend much of our lives waiting for something:

• an answer,
• a diagnosis,
• a relationship,
• a child,
• a breakthrough,
• a change.

But underneath all those things is a deeper invitation: to become people who are ultimately waiting for God himself. That doesn’t eliminate longing. It gives longing somewhere to go.

4. Give Thanks

Thanksgiving can feel almost impossible in suffering. And this is important: thanksgiving does not mean thanking God for the painful thing. You don’t have to be grateful for the diagnosis. You don’t have to call betrayal a blessing.

You don’t have to pretend infertility didn’t hurt. You don’t have to celebrate the thing that broke your heart. But you can look for reasons to thank God even while the pain remains. Sometimes thanksgiving is enormous. Sometimes it’s microscopic. Sometimes all you have is a whisper: “Thank you that you are here.” That’s enough.

Let Someone Carry Your Baggage

It was a simple gift.

But for Ebie, it became a picture of something much deeper. She realized God might not be asking everyone to understand her exact story. Maybe he was giving her people willing to carry some of it with her. That’s what community can look like.

Sometimes we think helping someone means fixing their problem. But a friend can’t fix most suffering. You can’t take away someone’s diagnosis. You can’t erase their miscarriage. You can’t repair their marriage. But you can carry a bag. You can bring dinner. You can sit quietly. You can do a load of laundry. You can make the phone call. You can say, “You don’t have to pretend with me.” Sometimes love looks less like solving and more like carrying.

So, what do you do when you’re in the middle of your own midnight, and finding hope feels exhausting?

Start by listening. The more we immerse ourselves in Scripture, the more readily its words can come to mind when we need them. A verse you’ve been memorizing suddenly becomes a prayer. A passage you’ve read a hundred times suddenly speaks into today’s circumstances. A truth you’ve known intellectually becomes something your heart can reach for. Scripture begins to move from the page into your imagination.

A Hallelujah Can Be Tiny

We sometimes imagine worship as something loud and triumphant:

• Hands raised.
• Voices singing.
• Certainty.
• Confidence.

But sometimes a hallelujah is barely audible. Sometimes it is a whisper from someone who has almost nothing left: “God, I don’t understand you, but I’m still turning toward you.” That’s hope. Not certainty about the outcome. Not denial of the pain. Not pretending everything is fine.

Hope is turning toward God in the dark. And perhaps that’s why hope is worth the risk. Because hope doesn’t require us to know that morning is coming. It asks us to trust that God is present at midnight.

Go grab Ebie’s book!

Listen to the podcast episode here.