Here's Hoping

 Do you know what the most dangerous feeling is?

The emotion that can get you into the hardest situation...
The emotion that can open up a whole world of trouble....
The emotion that can destroy fortified walls that are years thick...

Hope.

We are born with innate hope and expectation. We come into this world with a hopeful cry, searching for somebody who is expecting us and waiting for us. We hope things for ourselves and we hope things for others. When days are hard we hope for resolutions and brighter tomorrows. We cling to hope of a brighter future to get us through darker times.

The tricky part is when the thing we have been hoping for does not happen.
The trickier part is when we hope for that thing again, and it does not happen again.
And again. And maybe even again.

At some point we maybe feel like we are "Losing hope." 

Honestly, how many times should we continue to allow hope to rise up in our heart only to have it smashed down by life's fist? At what point are we living out the definition of insanity? "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," (Proverbs 13:12) and heartsickness hurts. 

So, we shut down and quit reaching out and begin to treat our sick heart with pills of settling and bitterness instead of allowing it to draw from the medicine of hope that has failed it countless times. The pain of having our hopeful heart crushed is so fresh and so raw that we simply cannot allow it to happen again.

In fact, I propose that "losing hope" is not an accurate description of this experience: we do not actually "lose" something, as in inadvertently misplace it and find ourselves unable to find it. Instead, we choose to tuck it away behind a big stone wall so it cannot open us up to hurt again. Then, each time a disappointment or heartbreak occurs, we add another big rock to that wall to remind our "hope" that it is not welcome anymore. 

Hope is dangerous because allowing ourselves to experience it means risking the fall again.

Allowing that hope to show, allowing that hope to reappear and stir our hearts again means opening the door to our true selves wide enough for hurt to come back into our life. However, it also means that something good could come back in also. Hope is necessary for each of us, as created beings, to remind us that there is a beautiful and good and lovely future. Hope anchors our soul, firmly and securely. The chain from that anchor stretches straight back to its heavily bolted attachment to the throne of God (Hebrews 6:19). 

Hope in our future with Him is unquestionable. It is assured. It is a certainty. The hope that makes our heart sick and lets us down is the one we have tied expectations to. Expectations of other people are just moments of resentment waiting to happen. They hurt us because people are....people. If our hope is directed toward God, it will not hurt us. If our hope is place in the hands of other jerks like ourselves (and I mean all lovely humans!) then we will be using our rocks of disappointment and hurt to build stone walls hundreds of feet high. The walls might keep out the hurt, but they will also keep out the joy and beauty and connection. 

Father God, 
Let me put my hope in You. Let my anchor be firmly attached to Your throne. Break the chains I have allowed to anchor into other peopled that they might be free of my expectations and I will be free of bitterness and resentment that comes when I don't get what I want, hope or expect. Allow me to put all of my trust and hope in You and Your promises so that my hope can arise and move others to be who You want them to be, and I can be accepting of the beauty they offer me: not dependent on out for my joy. 

Amen.

Get Ready to Rumble

Cheery thought: a calculated, well-researched and carefully planned attack is being carried out on me daily. It uses people around me, news stories, weather, lack of sleep and my deepest fears. The devil himself researches and determines the things that will most affect and hurt me, and then slides those things in front of me each time I have my eyes turned elsewhere.

That's terrifying.
But, strangely, it brings some relief too.
I'm not just "bad at life." I'm being set up--day after day--to fail. 

I can battle these things all day and night. I can turn my pillow over, turn the channel and even turn the other cheek, but I guarantee the hits will just keep coming. The key is to unmask the real root cause instead of chopping off the tendrils as they spring up and try to curl around my heart.

Lord,
Even when things are tough here--bad here--not going so well here--even when the long term outcome or way of living is not happening in a way I know You want it to or in the way You have shown me it could be, I MUST STILL CHOOSE to obey. To follow. To try and glorify You. 
I cannot control or be responsible for the decisions or actions that others make, but I can respond in a way that obeys Your heart and word.
God, help me remember that I am sitting in a place of victory right now. Help me remember that all of these present troubles give me a chance to live out my faith and adoration. Help me see that this hurt and this disappointment and even the constant battle of choosing the peace of knowing I'm doing what You want although it's disappointing everyone else is the right thing. The good thing. The only thing that will allow me to continue living in Your peace.

Amen

Precious

My heart is not quiet. It is not ok this morning.
I feel like my insides are swirling slowly around, first going one way, and then another.

Yesterday some of my friends lost their mother. She loved God fiercely, and had been fighting a fierce and fast battle with her health. The loss reminds me so much of my mother's death last year and I know how hard this is for them. I know this is one of those moments for which there will always be a "before" and an "after".

Yesterday a plan crashed with a helicopter as it was landing in DC.  At least 60 people were killed.My sons are flying today, my husband and I are flying next week, and my daughter is flying after that. I love traveling, but right now I'm not feeling that excitement. Instead I'm picturing the families of those people reeling from the news that everything is changed. 

This week rebels are bombing the city of Goma in DRC. They are using assault rifles to terrorize the people there who have been scrambling just to survive anyway, and people in the organization we have loved and supported for years are dead, dying and missing. At some point the gangs will have to move on, but life will never return to what it was.

Lord, it's a lot.

You are good, God. I know that. In my head I know that wholly. But, do I believe it with my heart completely? Do I believe You are good all of the time when You let our mothers and sons and daughters and wives and husbands and friends and grandmothers and loved ones suffer and hurt and be scared and die really hard deaths?

If I'm going honest, I would say that I CHOOSE to believe You are good all of the time. The fact that there is a choice though, shows that there is a doubt I am consciously pushing past. I believe You honor that choice, You honor that intentional faith: just like You did when the father cried out, "I believe! Lord help my unbelief! (Mark 9). So I keep choosing faith, and I hope that at some point it will come more naturally and I won't have to feel the anguish that comes from trying to cross the bridge from believing in my head to believing in my heart. 

When the belief holds the same weight in both head and heart, then the peace is able to settle in. Oh man: I've felt that peace and it's amazing. I've also had moments where that peace was just out of reach and it is so hard. 

There is a verse in Psalm 116 that reads: "Return to your rest, Oh my soul, For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." It is a good way to remind myself that even when the world is in chaos, God is here and taking care of me which should quiet my soul. The reminder helps, and I re-read it several times this morning. Then I continued through the Psalm and came across verse 15, which stopped me in my tracks.

Precious in the sight of the Lord
Is the death of His saints.

Wait, what? 

I don't think I like this. How is something that is so freaking painful for so many people actually PRECIOUS in God's sight? At first glance that seems almost mean! And, as my boys are both on a plane this morning, it doesn't really feel all that comforting.

The footnote in my Bible reads:  "Precious: their deaths, like their lives, are significant and important to God." Well that does not really help my heart. A life can be decades and decades full of love and faith and works and love...while death itself happens in less than a second. How are those things equally "precious?" 

Strong's definition for "precious" in this verse is: valuable, prized, weighty, rare, splendid, costly, highly valued and influential. The death of one of God's babies is highly valued. It is prized. It is costly and it is splendid. Why?

The moment of our death is the moment we begin living in eternity.

Our eternity matters to God. It matters so very much. It is precious. 

Just like God is with us in our lives, He is with us in our deaths, and those are precious moments to Him. I wanted longer with my mom. My friends were not ready to say good-bye to their mother. I bet that the families of those who died in that crash and in those attacks did not feel like their loved ones were ready to go.

BUT. 

It was time, and God was there, bringing each of them into their new life with Him. That moment when that person crossed from being with us to being with Him was personally supervised and watched by a Father who handled them as one would care for something incredibly valuable, prized and loved.

As I choose (yes, I know) to believe that God's ways are higher than mine, then I can work to wrap my head around the fact that whenever a person's death must occur, it will be precious and handled gently and lovingly...even if it does not feel like that to me. He is God, and He says death is precious. While I can't say I totally grasp it in my heart right now, I can say that I feel strangely comforted by that. Maybe that means it is on the way across the bridge from my head to my heart.

Tick Tock

Time to start doing this again.    
To start writing.
To take the time to write.
To find some sort of a way to snatch the whirling thoughts and hopes and fears and memories and aching that spin around me knocking me into places of numbness and antipathy then back into manic moments of dreaming and back into reality....to grab these things and put them down in some sort of order so that they don't completely cover the little bit of the breathing hole that God keeps open in the ice that threatens to close in over my head.

I'm so tired. 
Tired of doing it all, and then being tired of being tired that I did it all.
Tired of choosing to not hope because I know the downside of it all to well.
Tired of sitting in the same stupid place....a place I know I hate....but I don't leave because all of the ways out that I have tried have cost me a huge chunk of my heart and I'm feeling like there isn't much left of it at all.

But I'm also tired of not moving.
Tired of seeing what healing looks like for everyone but me.
Tired of wishing.
Tired of forcing joy, and then having to admit that I don't even know what is authentically me anymore.

It's time.

God, You have shown me so many times that thought study and prayer and then writing and processing that You speak to me. Let this desire and effort not melt away as life pours in and threatens my time. Help me to not give into myself...and to find the "self" You have fore me. Now, not the self of the past of the self I imagined and sometimes grieve....but the self that is the best thing I can be today. Let me behold the thing You're doing...and step into it. Let me feel your pushing and presence. Restore the sparkle to my eyes.

Amen.

Psalm 13:5-6
Psalm 27:14