The Hope Chest - Part 2

What are you walking through? Is the current economic situation placing a strangle-hold on your family's budget? Are you facing a terminal illness? Have your kids been sucked into the vortex of a shameless, entitlement-driven, immoral culture? Is your marriage on the brink of collapse?

I know people in every one of these situations.

Satan uses the negative circumstances in our lives to steal our hope. When things look really, really bad for us, we would do well to remember Abraham. Romans 4:18 says, “For Abraham, human reason for hope being gone, hoped on in faith…” Abraham was an old man. Verse 19 goes on to tell us that his body was as good as dead.

Amazingly, Abraham faced the facts but refused to give up his hope. In fact, his faith to father a child actually increased, in spite of the fact that his own body was useless. Romans 4:20 goes on to say, “No unbelief or distrust made him waver or doubtingly question concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong and was empowered by faith as he gave praise and glory to God. (vv.21)…He was fully satisfied and assured that God was able and mighty to keep His word and to do what He had promised.”

When we’re bombarded by doubt, we mustn’t allow mere facts to dilute our hope.

How do we accomplish this? Instead of being imprisoned by hopelessness, God desires for us to become a different type of prisoner. Zechariah 9:12 says, “Turn you to the stronghold of security and prosperity, you prisoners of hope…” A prisoner of hope is captured by the Lord and dwells in the impenetrable stronghold of His hope.

Whatever you're walking through, know this: God wants you to hold on to hope. His hand is not too short. He is at work in spite of how awful things might look. So take courage; stand firm and hold fast. Dare to dream the dreams and hope for the things that He has tenderly placed inside your hope chest.

The Hope Chest

Though I’ve never owned a hope chest, God used one to speak a profound spiritual truth to me at a time when I needed it desperately.

A hope chest traditionally holds the contents of a bride-to-be's future home. Whether simple or ornate, nestled inside each hope chest are treasures such as new linens, fine china and silverware, along with something intangible--the dreams and hopes of a woman's heart.

Eleven years. It's a long time to pray a specific prayer without an answer. It's a long time to maintain faith that the One who hears all prayers has heard yours. It's a long time to hold on to hope. And frankly, hopelessness had begun to bombard my heart.

So, God spoke to me through a dream:

A beautiful wooden hope chest rested at the foot of my bed. In the middle of the night, a thief broke in through my bedroom window, tiptoed to my hope chest, and silently lifted the lid. He stolel everything inside, leaving it completely empty.

When I awoke, the Spirit of the Lord told me that Satan was stealing my hope; in this particular situation, the enemy wanted to leave me hopeless. John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only in order that he may steal and may kill and may destroy.”

After this dream, I realized that hope is something that we need to make a diligent effort to hold on to. Hope is a provision from the Lord that will keep us going when our circumstances tempt us to feel hopeless. Hope keeps our dreams alive. Hebrews 6:19 calls hope “an anchor of the soul”. It prevents us from drifting into the sea of hopelessness.

Proverbs 29:18 tells us “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Hopeless people have no vision for the future. People who commit suicide do so because they have lost all hope.

Are you looking at a situation that seems absolutely hopeless? Does it seem as though your hopes are as good as dead?

I’m convinced God doesn’t mind when we look at our situations and realize that the facts seem hopeless. We cannot pretend away our circumstances. However, we mustn’t allow the situation to sway us concerning God’s ability. We can magnify the power and the ability of the Lord to do that which is seemingly impossible in our situation. We can face the facts, yet refuse to give up our hope!

Next week: Part two.

Because of our family is in travel mode this month, I decided to re-run this previously published post, along with part two the following week. I hope to get back to the real blogging world the first week of December. Thank you!

The Adventure Continues

Don't you love it when God hammers home a specific theme in your life over and over? Truth be known, I vacillate between feeling special and somewhat clueless. Special because all that hammering is evidence He considers me worth the effort. Clueless because otherwise I'd get the point the first time--or two.

This year God is teaching me to trust Him even when it feels like I'm walking through a cornfield with a tornado on my heels. It's easy to say we trust God when our air conditioner works fine, there's food in the pantry and nobody is barfing. But how about when we make five trips to the emergency room in one weekend, or we suffer undiagnosed chest pain for five weeks or our child has surgery and lives on a wound-vac for a month and a half? How about when we're bombarded from every side and see no end in sight? Then do we trust Him?

And what does that sort of trust look like?

For my birthday this past July a good friend made me a beautiful journal. Across the top is my name, and across the bottom is the word TRUST. And through all of the above incidents (yes, they all really happened in my family, and then some) I made a decision to trust God in the situation. Not some happy-go-lucky I'm sure it will all work out song and dance, but taking one trembling, feeble step after another, tears streaming down my face, saying "God, this hurts, this stinks, and I do not understand, but I am trusting You to work it out for my good. I trust that You are in control. I trust that you will take what the enemy meant for my harm, and use it for my good."

And then I get up and do it all over again the next day, even when I don't feel like it.

This week my daughter and I are up in Michigan on yet another movie adventure. She's cast as a foreground extra in a film directed by David Schwimmer (remember Ross from the sitcom "Friends"?). She's got big dreams and a calling, so we are walking through this open door. Of course, the title of the movie is Trust. Can you hear the hammer banging?

My adventure continues. I don't know what Michigan has in store, but I'm trusting God to work out all the details. Tell me, what trust adventure is God escorting you through? And/or what does trusting God look like to you?

An Uphill Climb to Normal

The screams roared down the hall and swept under the door of the tiny bedroom I shared with my four year old sister. My belly quivered. Not again.

I slid off the top bunk, opened the door and crept down the hall, my bare feet silent against the hardwood floors. Twisting the hem of my pink nightgown in my fist, I peered around the corner into my parent’s bedroom. Red velvet curtains shouted a warning from their vantage point high above the fracas.

I watched my parents’ shadows pantomime on the bedroom floor as they argued inside their bathroom. My ten year old body shuddered as something crashed against the wall. Suddenly my mom and dad stormed out of the bathroom. Just two steps inside their battle zone, I froze.

Chaos erupted. Behind me, all four of my younger siblings now stood in the doorway, wakened by the frightening noises we all dreaded. Their terrified sobs bombarded the room like a tragic symphony.

My parents never noticed.

Husband and wife shoved each other, angry words fiercely spewing like a faulty car radiator that was about to blow. Then, we all watched our parents begin a fist fight.

Someone needs to do something. I jumped between my parents, holding out my hands until one palm touched each of them. "Please stop fighting! You're scaring everybody! Please!"

That's when she did it.

My mom ran toward her nightstand and grabbed our heavy, black telephone. My jaw dropped as I watched her yank the cord right out of the wall. She’s breaking our telephone? Lifting the phone behind her head as though heaving a football, she threw it toward my dad with all her might. The phone plunged into the top of his head with an eerie thud. Blood dripped down my dad's face in a crazy, zigzag design. His hand flew up to the wound and he raced back to the bathroom, large circles of blood dotting the hardwood floor behind him.

The symphony grew to a frenzied hysteria.

Freaked out and terrified, all five of us kids followed our enraged mom as she ran into our living room--heading directly toward my dad's prized possession--his beautiful wood and glass gun case. With her defiant kick the glass enclosure was utterly shattered.

So were our hearts.

Sometimes it’s an uphill climb to normal. For me, normal always seemed far away, like a mystical dream that I knew existed, but would probably never find. Oh, I inhaled the scent of normal on occasion. Like when I visited of my grandparents’ house in Detroit for the weekend, where sheets graced every bed, Johnny Carson performed in their calm living room nightly, and my Gram cooked clockwork meals. Or the time I lived with my aunt and uncle in Arkansas for a year and learned a house could be pert near spotless, ketchup on crock pot pinto beans tastes extraordinary, and the true meaning of family.

My journey to normal started when I met Jesus, almost 20 years ago. It felt like I slowly started to wake up the day I entwined my fingers with His, and the mystical dream slowly shimmered into real life as we walked together. It hasn’t always been easy. But the cool thing about Jesus is He takes every step with you.

He knows our past, He knows our hurts, but I think what I like best about Jesus is He knows our hearts. And somehow, while we walk together, He gathers the shattered fragments and fuses them back together. It might sound improbable, but the girl who lived the scene above and the woman I’ve now become now barely recognize each other. And that’s close enough to normal for me.