Annabelle's Daily Word #2 - Hope

I'm Annabelle Santos, and this is The Daily Word.

I'm here listening to The Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston.  This song always reminds me and makes me think of my children because they, really, are my greatest love of all.

As you know, I started Spadet because my daughter had extreme eczema, and I was desperate to find a solution to help her. But as Benjamin Franklin once said, "with adversity comes opportunity", and as kind of a fun fact, Benjamin

Franklin was also the son of a soap maker!

When I think of my children, I think of how I can do my part in the world to be a good role model for them. They inspire me every day, and it brings me to today's daily word, which is hope.

A quote from C.S. Lewis states that "you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending," and I thought that was a really good, actionable idea for when you think of the word hope.

Hope sometimes feels like it's just like this thought in your head, but I want to turn hope into a verb. I want to get some energy and create a new idea surrounding the word.

I want to think about the 'H' in hope in terms of Healing and feeling grounded.

We go through that work to be renewed, and to start fresh. That healing is a very important part of the word hope and I hope that last week's episode on forgiveness served to inspire you to set out on that path toward healing.

The 'O' in hope uh for me is Optimism. I think that we should all visualize ourselves doing the thing that we want, or having the thing that we want or

being the person that we want to be, and if you visualize all of those things you can actually turn those thoughts into reality a lot faster.

The 'P' in hope is for Plan. I am a big planner; I believe that you have to actually know how are you going to get from a to b before you set out on a journey. Whether we're headed to a new restaurant, or some unknown destination, we check what the directions are and how to get there. Otherwise, we're just figuring it out as we go along. But even with the things that we hope for and strive for, we

should try to plan them out. "How am I actually gonna make that happen?"

Finally, 'E' in hope for me is Execute. I think that if we can take action in our lives, and not just wait for things to magically descend upon us, we have a much better shot at reaching our goals, and making those hopes and dreams into reality.

So, when you think of the word hope, I hope that you can remember these words.

My five minutes are up; I could talk to you forever, but let's do great things,

I'm here for you, and be well.

-Annabelle Santos