Saturday, April 2, 2016

Can Hope Stretch Another Day?

The winter has felt so very long. Cold weather. The season of tireless sorrow and dreary time. The woman who can always tell a story of hope and recovery has lost her edge. At least for this moment. God had taken her familiar comforts and people from her reach for whatever reason he deemed necessary. That simple fireplace space is absent to write and unload in the current home. The dream of that short lived excitement thinking a new blog .com page, now faltered and laid dormant. Watching and feeling 5 deaths. No 6 in one year. What a sad way to start a blog.. I am sorry but I have to clear my spirit of the intoxicating hope-less-ness. Can you bear with me a bit as I work this out?

I have been so sick. How sorry can we feel?  It has rolled over me again and again since December. Worn me out. Tipped the sad scale. Dropped me to the sheets for too long. I had not really known the depth of it all as it pushed out the good things. Holding it together for others and encouraging others. Watching precious people mourn and weep as they watch their dreams disappear wishing they could have done something in the past to change the outcome of their current sorrow. Feeling the no answers leak through their eyes in liquid form. I feel their bottom. Saying to those I love, it will be ok as they hold a sick child or two. Hearing the sorrow in the voice of my daughter and my grand as they lose their dream of a baby. 

Reminded that Christ always pulls it out for us month after month. Yes, he does but it has been far to long to just breath a sigh of anything like relief. Just this over and over helplessness. The same ole living.  Have I flunked Gods test for 12 years since my mom passed? I see all of the promises hanging in the air out of reach. Hearing those friends say again, "I thought this was going to be your year."  Watching my husband give up his passions. Seeing sadness in his eyes as a job ended that we thought had a miracle potential. Loss of income and that thing called joy. I need joy. This house needs joy!

                                                    It   all   stacked   up. 
                                           Joy   comes   in   the   morning   right? 

                 I know I felt the tears start to emerge this week as I slept the flu, infection, headache and fever away all week. 

I need another kleenex can you tell and a new view? I have been happy for each new piece of news of others new relationship, a new home, a great promotion, a new child. a time of rest. We all deserve those long awaited victories. But I selfishly wish for happy news that’s for my husband future or my planned out journey. A victory dance! How selfish that sounds. But I am  so very human. I desire a rescue from my tired soul. A reminder of warm light from above. But truth be told its not just the winter season of real time but the eternal waiting my soul has been in for years. 

As I read a post this morning at 1 a.m. my bottle of tears must have fallen to the floor and cracked opened. Was the lid really on that tight for so long? It dawned on me I have no idea if good things or despair were in my dreams these last couple of weeks. Lacking my usual encouragements I personally seek. Being isolated has taken a hit. I dreamt I asked for my old life back that had that security and sweet lilac bushes on our property on Long Circle or Cheetah Winds. I want a dry empty tear bottle and a vase that is filled with tulips that aren’t frozen in the close position that I recently bought myself and tossed.

As I have slept for the last 2 weeks I wondered what has been deposited in my spirit? Have I slept through a dose of hope? A correction? A God healing after 3 doctors couldn’t clear toxins from my body. Or my soul?  A moment of being aware of Christ around me and in me? I guess I just need to spill the sorrow in my heart of loss. Loss of hope.

The funny thing is God can tip the scale whenever He wants. He knows your breaking point. The point he can get you to hear in whatever way He wants. God is mysterious but really He speaks to those who can reach you when you can’t reach yourself. He uses these who listen to break open your sad bottled up self that was getting fossilized. My room and life had been so quiet as my husband came in and out caring for me. 

                          Out of the blue, God awoke my tribe.

It all started as my youngest son was leaving at 4 am for YWAM. He came in and hugged me goodbye as he left for 3 months again. I was sad. I had not even had the time I had desired with him.

My hair dresser texted and said she hoped I was ok. She was thinking of me. A friend called in the morning and prayed for me on her way to work. I needed that. A different girlfriend called and said she felt something was wrong and told me to take care of myself. My oldest son called out of the blue and said, “He hoped I was feeling better and to, Make it a great day!” His trade mark phrase. He never calls midweek, in the middle of the day. Then a persistent cousin reached out and renewed some hope in a good deed that really should not have been possible. She heard from God. She was obedient. She’s the one who just lost her brother. She had time for me? My prayer partner texted when I confessed I was stuck and I had not been praying,  She said, “She was praying like crazy for us.”  And then at 1 A.M. this morning I read Beandkeepbeing Instagram post. She wrote simple truth. The words open my tears up. It unload my darkness. I am undone which is a good thing. Here are her reminders of God’s word that are exchanging fresh air into my soul. It called out to me the fresh word of God. The things that usually bring me comfort that I usually grasp on my own forced my lid to come off the contained tears from a fellow writer I have never meet..




Winter ends and spring will come.
Weeping last for only a night and joy comes in the morning.
Our God redeems what is broken.
He repays us for the years of what is loss and suffering.
Don’t give up.
Hold tight.
Wait for the promises.
Drink deep from the deep intoxicating well……..

I want all of those overcoming words to come forth like Jesus out of the grave. To celebrate for days like Esther’s victory party. To have our walls rebuilt for the future. I so badly want to throw off the old sack cloths of despair to a new victory. I want to kick those locust back at the enemy and tell him to gag on em. 

Our situation has not changed this long night as I wrote this blog. God has not changed, He is still God. It’s all his call. He just called on his faithful people to open the way. My people. His people, My tribe. His tribe.

Spring will come and eventually something of that long awaited joy will bring that which we have waited years for. God is for us not against us, I told my husband hours ago as he fell asleep. We sometimes allow the enemy to lie to us. And we believe him. Christ has overcome for us. Thats the true unselfish victory.

So when the Spirit whispers to you. Heed the call. Be obedient. You are doing something by your one small deed. As many little deeds and acts of kindness make a breaker anointing possible. I truly felt it all. One bit at a time. From each of you my friends.

 He has stretched my hope for another day. 

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Psalm 126:5