so here's my question (not for myself): when life keeps throwing hate at you and you come to the last fiber of yourself and feel it slip through your fingers and all you can do is toss your soul up into the air screaming "ENOUGH! I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE!", then what? what comes after the i-can't-take-anymore statement?
you have to take more.
you have to.
maybe you have bills to pay. and maybe you have a two-year-old who needs you to take her to the blood transfusions that keep the leukemia from destroying her tiny body. and maybe you have a husband who's fighting his own leukemia who needs you to try to smile at least once a day. and maybe you have a ten-year-old who seems to be slipping farther and farther away from you because you've become so numb to life.
you have to take more even after you cannot take anymore.
this is the despair i'm witnessing.
we're former friends, despair and i...had a falling out a few months ago, but we were once very close. and yet, i've never known despair near as intimately as this. i find myself at a loss.
somehow, i can usually trick people into finding their hope. i can usually find it through conversation and reveal it in a way that makes it real to them again. this is usually a result of silent prayer in between every exchange that directs me to know where to look for this hope. this time i cannot find it. i cannot find one luminous cell. and that darkness frightens me. it's bigger than me.
so as i stare so deeply into that hopelessness that i fear i will fall in, i call myself out of it and declare that i will continue to hope. and i will not give up that hope although the despair she is in is so thick it fights to swallow everything like the cancer that birthed it. i make this declaration, shout it into the cavern of emptiness, probably more for me than for her, to save me from my own gravity to despair. i will hope. not just in this situation, but in all and for the rest of my life. i will be a woman of hope. that's my declaration today.
in the meantime, friends...anyone know what to say to someone who it seems God has abandoned? i know He must not have. i know He's involved. i know there are better things ahead. but i've discovered that the language of hope seems to be versed entirely in cliche. so friends, how do you breathe life into dead hope? any words?
Merry Christmas 2018
7 years ago
2 comments:
Hey Loisa! As I read this entry I really hesitated to comment because I am no where near as eloquent as writer as you, but I still felt like you could use some encouragement:) So, I know these scriptures were definitely for me and some things I'm facing when I read them, but hopefully they find root in your heart too....
Romans 4:17 - 21
"... God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken.... he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised he was also able to perform."
I think sometimes we try so hard to find new ways to say something at the risk of sounding cliche that we may end up not saying anything at all. It used to rub me weird when pastors or friends used John 3:16 to make a point. I was like, "Seriously, can you please find a new scripture." But just because we can become numb to a verse or a certain promise of God doesn't make that word or promise any less true or real.
I love the end of the those verses where it says that Abraham was strengthened in faith giving glory to God. In what I'm facing, I'm trying to see God faithful even in the small things. I may not see a complete healing or cure right now, but I'm going to praise God in any small step of progress. I'm choosing to find Him in the small things... and it's recognizing the small things that keeps my faith and hope going strong.
Anyways, sorry this is so long, but I just felt like I needed to share.... can't wait for you to come back for a visit again soon!!!!
- Steph
"I'm sorry." "I love you." "I'm here." That's all I've got. But I don't think it's about words at all. I think it's about being present (emotionally, physically and spiritually) in the midst of despair. Words become a distant memory in the pain of the past. If hope is found in Christ alone, then the promise of Christ in us has the power to illumnate despair as the lie that it is. By listening, embracing, and crying with your friend, you become an ambassador of God's hope founded in His love for us.
Matthew 25:40 The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
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