Starting a new year always has you reflect back and acknowledge your failures, success, happiest moments and your greatest pain. You view these events objectively, with wisdom and hindsight. That is what I have done, but I just haven't look this past year but several years.
There has been a current theme in my life these past few years and with each year that passes the theme just became more present. As I reflected back I saw that my one disappointment grow into a void. Granted this was one HUGE disappointment and I felt that I was betrayed by the one person who had never failed me. It's very difficult to admit this; let alone write this down. My disappointment was with God.
Let me explain. Five years ago my biological clock became very present. My window for a safe pregnancy was closing. Once you hit a certain age, it gets more complicated and the fact that I had another health issue complicated matters even more so. My husband and I had prayed for a child, multiple children in fact. We had prayed for guidance. We had prayed for direction. Others had been praying for us. But God remained silent. As time passed that silence made me angry. There was this desire in my heart to have a child, yet it wasn't being met. I had people come to me saying that God was going to keep his promise and that I just had to be patient. With each day, week, year my hope for a child died. The reality of our situation and circumstance; a child in any way, biological or not, wasn't going to happen. When this shot of painful reality set, my spirit was damaged. My hope was gone. My purpose unclear. I didn't want to seek out fellowship or participate. I was closing myself off. I didn't want to go to church. I just didn't want to. Before I more on, I want to make one thing clear. My belief in Christ and all who He is and all that He does never stopped. What occurred was I was hurt and in pain and the person I would normally go to was that one I felt hurt me.
I came to realize that isolating myself from things regrading God wasn't good, but I just couldn't work my way back. I had underestimated my grief and my pain. Hope was a distant memory. I wasn't sure what to do. Then an unexpected New Year's Eve message provided a glimmer of hope.
The speaker had 5 points regarding when we go through trials and how gratitude can restore hope.
1. Hope Can Be Lost
2. Keep Praying
3. Set your mind on the Lord (on His Love, His Compassion, His Goodness)
4. The Lord is all you need
5.Seek the Lord while you wait for Him (expected trust in the Lord)
The passage he spoke from was Lamentations 3:18-26. As you could probably guess solely from the book, that the people of Israel were going through some serious hurt, pain and disappointment yet the author Jeremiah found hope in the void.
Hope can be lost. "...My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord." v3:18 I'm experiencing this moment. My hope is lost. The fact that Jeremiah experienced hope being lost actually made me feel better. Here is a prophet of God, a man who spoke with God and saw his greatness first hand can have his hope lost, then I'm in good company and not a failure in my faith. Acknowledging that my hope is lost is important but I needed to identify why my hope was lost. I was angry at God for not delivering a child, that's why. As I started to ponder that statement, I realized that this desire/need for a child had consumed me and it had became an idol.
This desire had become unhealthy and took over my every waking thought. My mind and heart were consumed on how unfair it was that we had no children. All the different scenarios of those having what I wanted made me frustrated and angrier. I had lost my focus. Losing my focusing cause me to lose my hope.
So what am I going to do about it? Well the whole of point of the speaker's message was that yes Hope can be lost, be can also be restored, through prayer, setting my eyes on all of God's wonderful attributes and gifts, knowing He is all I need and to continued to seek him even when He is silent.
So I going to do just that. I'm going to daily write down what I'm grateful for, pray and seek Him daily and I'm going to keep this blog to journal my journey.
I pray that this be a place where I can process, explore, vent and have a record my restored hope through gratitude.
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