Solo parents know weariness. You might carry emotional burdens for yourself and your children—sometimes even for your ex, who may be struggling too. Sometimes it feels like your furrowed brow is turning to concrete, making you look like you’ve aged ten years in one. You might carry the burden of financial shortfalls; complicated co-parenting; job insecurity. Or guilt, disappointment, and the judgment of others. Or hormonal teenagers, kids with special needs, preschoolers with a constant stream of impossible questions, or toddlers whose energy is tough to match with an empty tank. Sometimes, it feels like you’re barely treading water, let alone gaining ground on a brighter future.

In 1851, French novelist Alexandre Dumas fled France upon the presidency of Napoleon, who reviled him. He spent wildly and was persistently broke. He had as many admirers as he had powerful enemies. He knew plenty of death, scandal, and accomplishment. Who knows when he said this— perhaps later in his life, upon reflection, or as a farewell—but it serves as the evergreen advice of a man who knew vast extremes of joy, darkness, indulgence, vanity, talent, injustice, and love:

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world,” he wrote. “There is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait, and hope.”

A hundred years later, England’s J.R.R. Tolkien echoed Dumas, though from the mouth of a warrior elf facing insurmountable odds in Lord of the Rings:

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it, there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

We are not being banished by Napoleon, or facing an apocalypse of orcs. We’re ordinary people once wrecked by small banishments and tiny apocalypses in a context more real than any history or any fantasy: that of our family, our home, and our expectations of life.

The weariness that follows the shock might have made you crumble under pressure. Frustration robs us of both the future and the present. Disappointment clouds the simplest, most important truth: what we should do to overcome it and keep moving forward.

Weariness is a wall between you and hope. But it’s not made of bricks or stone, as it might look. It is an illusion—its only strength is in its ability to make you believe you’re hopeless. As soon as you know it’s an illusion, one push will topple it.

The Gift of Today

Cartoonist Bill Keane, who created the Family Circus comic, wrote, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift of God—which is why we call it the present.”

Staying present in the present—not overflowing with regret for the past, or with worry for the future—takes practice. We’re wired to replay the ways we’ve been wronged and the ways we’ve wronged others over and over again, and to fret so much we can’t focus on the small, sweet moments right in front of us.

None of us can practice staying present in the present by ourselves. Keane is right. Today (and every day) is a gift. To appreciate it, interpret it, learn from it, and share it well, pay attention to the giver.

Author Paul David Tripp reminds us: “Your hope is not to be found in your willingness and ability to endure but in God’s unshakable, enduring commitment to never turn from His work of grace.”

We are all God’s work of grace. You are His work of grace. Your children are His work of grace. And here’s a brain-twister, though you know it already no matter how hard it can be to admit—your ex is God’s work of grace.

He turns away from none of us. What distinguishes our practice of appreciating His gifts of the present (or not) is that some of us remember the origin of the gift, and some of us don’t. Some of us get swallowed up by regret, worry, and replaying our negative loops over and over again so loudly we can’t hear Him anymore, the one who gave us today.

To find hope, turn the volume down on all the noise in your head and heart. Seek quiet places, quiet reflection, and quiet forgiveness. God is not going to shout—He is going to wait for you to calm down enough to hear His voice.

Tripp continues: “God isn’t working for our comfort and ease; He’s working on our growth.”

Growth can hurt, but all the work, pain, and frustration is not for nothing. Like an aching muscle used past its breaking point, He is using it to fortify you. He wastes nothing.

Author and minister Robert Fulghum might have been taking a cue from those lessons when he wrote, “I believe imagination is stronger than knowledge. Myth is more potent than history. Dreams are more powerful than facts. Hope always triumphs over experience. Laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe love is stronger than death.”