Snapshots of Hope

I don’t know about you, but I have snapshots in my memory.  They are literally like pictures that I took and then filed away.  But they stuck.  These images have stayed with me.  I go back and look over them every once in a while, and I haven’t really seen any meaning in all of them until now. 

When I say I wandered in the wilderness, that is kind of stating it nicely.  It was honestly more like violently thrashing around in the pitch black dark.  Things were so bleak that I couldn’t possibly see these snapshots for what they were at the time…But as the light breaks through and I am able to see more clearly, it is obvious that God was throwing me ropes every now and then.  I just didn’t grab on for a really long time. 

These moments in time now seem like landmarks along my journey back to God, and consequently back to myself and my family.  Or perhaps they are signs along my way for the first time ever to the TRUE God and to my most authentic self.

Snapshot #1:

I shared this story in my first post last week.  But it really sticks out in my mind, mainly because it was the first time I even hinted to anyone that I was going through a major struggle.  I never wanted to admit to my mom or my sister – the two closest women I have in my life – that not only was I a disaster zone on the inside, I was also asking some serious questions about God and faith.  I was already far into the doubt camp, but I simply asked them at dinner one night if either of them had ever questioned their faith.  The answer my sister gave me is what really has repeated itself in my mind since that time.  She said, “At some point you have to decide, right?” At that time, I didn’t really want to decide anything.  I remember thinking that I had already “decided” at age 8 to become a Christian, and...Yeah.  Things weren't going so well.

I just didn’t understand that I had to keep deciding, over and over and over again.  I have to keep choosing Christ, no matter what happens in this life.

Snapshot #2:

Many years later, I distinctly remember another moment, frozen in time.  I remember waking up one morning after having a particularly awful fight with my husband the night before.  A voice in my head said to me, “You know you have a choice, right?  You don’t HAVE to make the choices you are making now.  There is another way to live.”  That was it.  Then, silence.  That’s IT?  Whatever.  The choice to live another way seemed way too far off and way too hard for me.  I didn’t know how. 

I didn’t understand that, as a Christian, I had access to the power of the Holy Spirit living within me.  The very power of God that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me.  I couldn't possibly grasp at the time that God wanted to raise me from the dead, too.  He could do it, but I had to choose.  God was offering me a gift of freedom…All I had to do was respond and grab the dang rope. 

But I didn’t grab the rope.  Not yet.   

Snapshot #3:

More time passed, and my closest friend asked me to do a Bible study.  “How about Believing God by Beth Moore?” she said.   Great.  Just what I need…to read about a bunch of stuff I don’t really think is true in the first place.  How fun.  I started it, but I had a very bad attitude, and I wasn’t letting things in.  I got it academically.  I understood the material.  I had heard it all before.  It just wasn’t making a difference.  I still resented God, and I still felt out of control in so many ways.

I didn’t understand yet that my sweet friend, who had been through her own dark night, knew exactly what I was going to need…Because it was what she also had needed.  I didn’t WANT to see that she was planting very important seeds in me that, with time, God was faithful to water and grow.

Snapshot #5:

While still doing the Believing God study, I finally said to God (which at the time I basically said to the air, because I wasn’t believing anything, remember?)…I said, “Ok.  I need help here.  You have been silent, and I have been bitter and mad at you, and I really don’t know that I can trust you.  But if you are there, anywhere at all, I need to know it.  I know this really sounds like an ultimatum.  But I need some proof.  Just something.”  Literally.  I said that.  I am embarrassed that it wasn’t a more eloquent moment.  Well, no, actually, I am not embarrassed.  Because I think God knew He finally had the real me.

I kid you not, the following scenario honestly happened. 

The next morning after saying that silly stuff to whoever was out there, I woke up to go for a run at 6am.  It was still dark at that time, and when I got out of bed I realized that it was raining pretty hard.  So, I decided to wait a bit and see if the rain let up.  Around daybreak, the rain did give way, and I headed out the back door of my house to run.  I was looking down, setting my watch, so I didn’t see it right away.  But when I finally looked up, the biggest, brightest, fullest rainbow I had ever seen was right over me.  I could see the entire thing, end to end.  I started crying.  I cried the entire 4 miles that I ran.  I cried, I jumped, I fist-pumped the air, and I yelled like a maniac, “YOU ARE THERE!  I SEE YOU!!!  YOU ARE THERE, thank GOD…THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU…Oh, my heart…You ARE there.” 

If I had been able to go for a run at 6am in the dark as I had planned, I would have not seen any rainbow. 

I never understood in my entire life that God wants to reveal Himself to us…We just have to ask.  I had to start seeking before I would find.

So why all the strain and struggle?  For me personally, I think God allowed me to go through a long period of desert living for a few main reasons:  1. He wasn’t threatened or fazed by my questions or my anger at Him.  He is God.  He needed me to get it sorted out and gave me the space to do so; 2. He knew, that as every good TX Panhandle girl did, I lived according to what I had been taught.  For the very first time in my life, I was thinking for myself, rather than following a prescribed set of expectations; 3. He knew that questioning IS seeking.  He knew I would find Him on the other side.  It’s just that I didn’t know that yet.

I am not advocating giving God an ultimatum, insisting that He shows up.  It’s simply all I could muster at that time in my life.  He had already shown up in the words my sister spoke to me, and in the whisperings about making different choices, and in the encouragement of a soul sister.  I shouldn’t have needed a rainbow, but He gave me one.  Bless Him, He gave me His signature sign of His ancient covenant.

Something in my heart opened up that day.  It was a tiny crack, but something was beginning.  Hope was beginning to stir in the ashes of my heart.

I faltered around in the dark, but I finally grabbed the rope.