Loving Hopeful is Loving Forward

There's an old practice that hikers use on mountain trails.

When the path gets unclear, when the trail markers disappear and the terrain all starts to look the same, they stack rocks. Small cairns. Little towers of stone placed just far enough apart that you can see the next one from where you're standing.

They don't tell you everything about the journey ahead. They don't map out every switchback or warn you about every hard stretch. They just say one thing.

Someone was here. And they made it through. Keep going.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Because I think the best leaders I've ever known do something similar. Not with rocks, obviously. But with their words.

Their presence.

Their belief in people.

They build cairns.

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There's a leader I want to tell you about. Her name was Margaret. Mid-level manager at a company that was going through a really rough season. Layoffs. Restructuring. The kind of organizational chaos that makes people feel invisible and disposable.

One of her team members, a young guy named Darius, was struggling. Not with performance. With belief. He'd started to shrink. Showing up, doing the work, but clearly somewhere else in his head. Like he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Margaret didn't call a performance review. She didn't send a motivational email with a list of bullet points.

She sat down with him. And she said something like this. "I remember when you walked in here eighteen months ago and pitched that idea everybody else was too afraid to bring to the table. I remember when you stayed late three nights in a row to make sure that project landed right. I remember who you were before this season got heavy. And I need you to know I still see that person. Actually, I see someone even further along than that. I see where you're going. And it's really good."

Darius told me later that conversation changed something in him. Not because Margaret solved anything. But because she built him a cairn. She pointed to the stones already laid behind him and said see that? You made it through all of that. And I believe you're going to make it through this too.

That's what it means to love hopeful.

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Hope in leadership isn't wishful thinking. It's not a pep talk or a poster on the break room wall. Real hope is anchored. It's grounded in something solid. For me, that anchor is God. The belief that the people I lead are not accidents. That their stories are not finished. That what's being formed in them right now, even in the hard seasons, is going somewhere.

That kind of hope changes how you see people. It lifts their chin. Opens their eyes. Points them toward something they can't always see for themselves.

To love hopeful is to love forward. It's vision, not just memory. It says I see who you're becoming and I believe in that person. Not the polished, finished version. The person being shaped right now, in the middle of the mess and the uncertainty and the slow, hard work of growth.

That is one of the most powerful things a leader can offer someone.

Now here's where the cairns come back in. Because loving forward doesn't mean you forget the past. The past is actually part of the message. Those stones of remembrance, the moments someone overcame, the hard seasons they survived, the times they showed up when it cost them something, those are not just history. They're evidence.

Evidence that the person in front of you has what it takes.

When you remind someone of who they've already been, you're handing them a stone. You're saying this is real. This happened. You did this. And if you did that, you can do what's coming next.

The ancient Israelites did this literally. Every time God brought them through something, they'd stack stones. Build an altar. Create a physical marker that said we were here and God was faithful. So that when the next hard season came, they could look back and say we've been here before. Not this exact spot. But this kind of place. And we made it through.

Leaders can do the same thing for their people.

You can be the one who remembers for them when they've forgotten. Who holds the story of who they are and where they've been and points it like a compass toward where they're going.

I want to be honest about something though. This kind of leadership requires you to actually pay attention. You can't remind someone of their stones of remembrance if you've never taken the time to notice them. You can't love someone forward if you only see their current performance and not their full story.

That takes presence. Real presence. The kind that slows down enough to actually know someone. To see what they're carrying. To remember what they've come through.

Most leaders are moving too fast for that.

But the ones who slow down? The ones who pay attention and remember and speak forward into people's lives? They build something that outlasts them.

This isn't just for the people you lead either. This is for you.

Take a minute and think about your own cairns. The moments in your life and leadership where you weren't sure you'd make it through and you did. The seasons that felt like too much and turned out to be exactly enough to form something important in you. The times God showed up in ways you didn't expect or deserve.

Those stones are real. They're behind you. And they're evidence. Evidence that you are not who you were. Evidence that growth is real and it's happening. Evidence that the God who was faithful then is faithful now.

So when the current season feels unclear, when the trail markers seem to disappear and everything looks the same, don't just look forward. Look back first. Find your cairns. Let them steady you.

And then look up. And look forward. Because the path ahead is real even if you can't see all of it yet.

Here's what I want you to sit with this week. Who needs you to love them forward right now? Who on your team, in your family, in your circle, has forgotten who they are and what they're capable of? Who needs someone to stack a cairn for them and say keep going, I see you, I believe in where you're headed?

And maybe this too. What are your own stones of remembrance? What has God brought you through that you've been too busy or too discouraged to look back at lately?

Hope isn't flimsy. It's not a feeling. It's a decision. Anchored in what's already been proven true.

Love forward. Stack the stones. Build the cairns.

And lead people toward a future they can't yet see but desperately need to believe in.

That is LOVE Fierce leadership at its best.

Lead in LOVE!

Doc