Hope in the Midst of Your Hard Reality
Hope that is seen is not hope at all. By definition, we hope
in the midst of hard realities while we wait for what is unseen. I’m learning that now, but
in 2013 I was a basket case while my known world was being turned upside down.
Over a brief two months that felt like forever, three of our
children were diagnosed with the serious form of a rare genetic condition called Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency following one child’s illness. The diagnosis of one child led to the diagnosis of two more, and with each diagnosis, my husband's and my grief grew exponentially.
I wasn’t thinking about
hope when I began compiling Bible verses and pasting them in the front of my
journal. I was coming up for air and taking gasping breaths between the waves
of grief that washed over me.
The child whose sickness had prompted the genetic testing
was still recovering from the same unknown virus that had landed him in the ER at a children's hospital, and I was separated and
disconnected from community as I stayed home to care for him for several weeks.
For me, a regular church-goer, it was an odd sensation to take my son for walks
in his stroller in the fresh air on a beautiful Sunday morning while my friends
gathered for worship. Physically isolated from many of the people who knew and
loved me, I listened to birds singing and cicadas humming, and I waved and
smiled to neighbors who weeded in their gardens and mowed their lawns. None of
these neighbors knew I was a mother whose child…children…had just received a
heart-wrenching diagnosis.
Even now, thinking and writing about that season of my life, fresh tears form and I pause, remembering the overwhelming sadness and the inability to articulate the confused and powerful emotions I felt.
Over the months to come, as grieving took its natural
course, I re-entered my circles and even made some new friends. But I walked
this tight rope of not sharing at all what was really going on in my heart—or
over-sharing to the point that a person would get that glazed look in her eyes
and I realized I’d gone too far, I’d said too much, and I didn’t know how to
recover the conversation.
My family surrounded me and praying friends mourned with me,
so I wasn’t totally alone in that time, but there were places in our hearts
that only my husband Scott and I shared. And there were the places that I could
only go with God, and then there were the places that I couldn’t even go. As
best as I can remember, the word hope wasn’t on my lips in those early days.
When a verse or a word of encouragement came to me, though,
I wrote it down and added it to my list. Romans 15:4 says this,
“For whatever was
written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
Without knowing it, I was storing up hope for myself. It was
daily grace and it was future grace, all of it grounded in historical grace,
meant to grow and fuel endurance and encouragement that would give me hope.
The Scriptures were written so that endurance plus encouragement
would equal hope.
Think of the oppressed Israelites who suffered for hundreds
of years in Egypt prior to their exodus, and then God coming and saying to Moses, “’I have surely seen the
affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of
their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver
them…’” (Exodus 3:7)
How they endured, and how their story encourages us! The Israelites' endurance through physical affliction strengthens us to
endure our own hardships. God’s encouragement to them in their sufferings--physical, emotional, and spiritual--encourages us to persevere in faith. God saw their hardship, he heard their cries, and he sees and hears us as well. God’s faithfulness to keep
his word and deliver them offers us hope that he will do the same for us,
whether in this life or the next.
Endurance plus encouragement equals hope.
Endurance plus encouragement equals hope.
Consider the forty years in the wilderness and how God
faithfully fed his wandering people exactly what they needed, each day, and how
their sandals didn’t wear out on their feet. In our wilderness times of
illness, singleness, infertility, broken promises, abandonment, miscarriage,
loss of a loved one, divorce, or even genetic conditions, God remains faithful. When we feel like we're wandering in circles and don't know what tomorrow will bring, God gives us his word—spiritual manna—to feed our souls so we can endure and be
encouraged and experience hope.
The Old Testament is a storehouse of such stories to build
our hope. There’s David, who has the promise that he would become king yet who
hides in caves and trusts God for vindication. Then Esther boldly approaches
King Ahasuerus at the risk of death to ask for the lives of her people. Prophet
after prophet tells of the downfall of God’s enemies and the redemption of his
people. What about the endurance required during the gap between the Old to New
Testaments, the hundreds of years of waiting for the Messiah, and then the
encouragement of his arrival? How Scripture builds our hope!
In Romans, Paul tells us that
“whatever was written in Scripture…was written for our instruction” so that
endurance, encouragement and hope might become the fabric of our lives too.
Here is some more hope from Romans: True hope knows that
what others intend for evil, God can use for good. (Romans 12:21) Secure hope
trusts that the hard realities in our lives aren’t fruitless but are being used
to establish God’s character within us. (Romans 5:3-5) Trusting hope believes
that God will work all things together for good for those who love him and are
called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
True, secure and trusting hope leads us to “not lose heart.
Though our outward nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day
by day. For this slight and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal
weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are
seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are
transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
As John Piper boldly declares, none of our suffering is meaningless. It is working for us an eternal weight of
glory.
Hope leads us to the unseen and strengthens us to wait for it,
to wait for him:
“Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what
he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
(Romans 8:24-25)
Without my knowing it, God led me to capture a list of verses in that bewildering season following diagnosis when I lived in a mental
fog and when my heart was overwhelmed so that I would endure and be encouraged
and learn what real hope is. What I thought was merely a survival mechanism became a hope-building exercise that strengthened me to endure and encouraged me to believe for the long haul, for a hard reality that wasn't going away.
As much as I'd like to wake up in the morning and find that certain hard realities in my life are figments of my imagination and will fade away like forgotten dreams from the dark night, they still confront me between the eyeballs. There's medicine to distribute and there are appointments with specialists that remind me this is my real life.
But it's not my whole life. It's an important piece of it, one that calls me to serve my children and love them in unique and particular ways, but it's not the whole package. The medical diagnosis that at first felt defining has been woven into the tapestry of a much bigger life together that includes belly laughs, bicycle rides, trips to the beach and the everyday joys and challenges of being a family. As we live and love and laugh together, we also enjoy a bigger view of and a greater dependence on God for our family and our future.
There’s a lot that I cannot see. I can’t see the future, for one. My children might experience severe health complications, or they may not. But none of us can see the future. We don’t know what may happen tomorrow.
But it's not my whole life. It's an important piece of it, one that calls me to serve my children and love them in unique and particular ways, but it's not the whole package. The medical diagnosis that at first felt defining has been woven into the tapestry of a much bigger life together that includes belly laughs, bicycle rides, trips to the beach and the everyday joys and challenges of being a family. As we live and love and laugh together, we also enjoy a bigger view of and a greater dependence on God for our family and our future.
There’s a lot that I cannot see. I can’t see the future, for one. My children might experience severe health complications, or they may not. But none of us can see the future. We don’t know what may happen tomorrow.
My hope isn’t in the future. As another has said before
me, my hope is in the one who holds the future. I hope for God and in him and
with his help. As Paul beautifully states, “On him we have set our hope that he
will deliver us again.” (2 Corinthians 1:10)
My hope for my family makes no sense apart from God.
Anything and everything else I might place my hope in falls short compared to him. Would I love to see a cure for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency developed in my lifetime? Absolutely! I hope for a cure, and I greatly appreciate those who work towards finding one, but I would be desperately disappointed if I placed all of my hope in a cure that didn't come to be. I hope for a cure, but I don't place my ultimate hope in a cure.
Although I might be tempted to place my hope in medicine or money, those finite resources won’t ultimately heal my children. I’m thankful for doctors and medical professionals and the guidance and help they provide. They are a wonderful means of God’s grace to my family. But I don’t place my hope in doctors to save me or my children. Their help, however wonderful and worthwhile, only extends so far and then ends abruptly at the door of death.
My only real and lasting hope for my family is in God. So with the psalmist, whatever your hard reality is, let’s join our voices and exhort our souls together:
Although I might be tempted to place my hope in medicine or money, those finite resources won’t ultimately heal my children. I’m thankful for doctors and medical professionals and the guidance and help they provide. They are a wonderful means of God’s grace to my family. But I don’t place my hope in doctors to save me or my children. Their help, however wonderful and worthwhile, only extends so far and then ends abruptly at the door of death.
My only real and lasting hope for my family is in God. So with the psalmist, whatever your hard reality is, let’s join our voices and exhort our souls together:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in
turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and
my God.” (Psalm 42:5)
Open God’s word. Invite the Scriptures to instruct you so
that through endurance and through encouragement you might have hope for today
and bright hope for the future.
To get you started, click on this link for a PDF of the verses and quotations that the
Lord put on my heart in the summer of 2013: Hope in the Midst of Your Hard Reality Verses and Quotations
Also, here's a link to a song that came to mind while I was writing this article: "Cornerstone"
Finally, here is my prayer for you from Romans 15:13:
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."
Finally, here is my prayer for you from Romans 15:13:
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."
For more about Katie's book, Loving
My Children, click here.
Email Katie at lovingmychildrenbook@gmail.com.
Email Katie at lovingmychildrenbook@gmail.com.