Day 16: Where does my hope come from?

Day 16, Take 2 (It took two drafts to get this one written)

Today's task is to write about hope.

1 Peter 3:15

"But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect."

People often ask how there can be a God if bad things happen to good people or if bad things happen at all. That is a tough question to answer, and there are many steadfast Christians who have looked up at the sky and asked, "God, where are you?" as they ponder devastating things that have taken place in the world or in their town or to them directly. I have asked this question myself many times, and I have been desperate to feel God reaching for me, trying to hold me. Sometimes those feelings are a LONG time coming. However, because of God, I have a place to look when I am trying to overcome challenges. Through the connections God has given to me, I have hope.

When I feel hopeless, the first place I usually go is to God in prayer. My prayers often start simply--whispering the name of a person or an event. If I am dealing with a personal struggle, I will often start by asking for help. "Lord God, please help me."--Help me speak in love. Help me put the person on the other side of this conversation first. Help me to show grace to my son in the way you have shown it to me. Or "Please forgive me." Forgive me for speaking without considering the consequences. Forgive me for reacting with passive aggression. Forgive me for neglecting to help someone when I could clearly see a need. Because of my faith, there is always a place to turn my attention outside of myself. I have hope that God can still make the most of bad situations, and he can still make beauty out of my mistakes. I have hope that God can heal.

One way God leads us to hope is by connecting us with people who walk with us in our times of struggle. I have been so fortunate to have people who have walked beside me in times of pain--people who have not shied away from seeing me in vulnerable positions--Wes, my parents, and several dear friends come to mind. My favorite story of this sort of connection (because of its unlikeliness) comes from my time working the Starbucks drive thru in Washington state. I missed teaching terribly, and Wes and I had recently been told that we would not be able to have children. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of lattes and uncertainty. In that time, I met a woman who would become my friend. She was a teacher, and she was going through a very similar infertility struggle. She was a regular customer of mine in the Starbuck's drive thru. It's hard to believe that a connection such as that would come about over a six-pump vanilla Starbucks double shot with cream, but somehow it did. It started with teacher talk, and then she mentioned her school needed substitute teachers, and eventually, we were having real conversations, and we connected in our struggles and our faith. And it is my faith that chooses to see God's hand on that connection.

The way I see God completing his promise of hope for me is by preparing me to reach out to those around me when they need hope. I see this in a very different way than I used to because I used to believe that if I reached out to those around me who were not followers of Christ, I should try and change them. I have since realized that people will make the decision to follow God personally. It is not my responsibility to make anyone choose to follow Him. It is my responsibility to reach out to others and to walk with them in God's love and empathy.

I do not share any of this lightly. Many people I love very much follow Christ, and many people I love very much do not follow Christ. I honor all of my friends and family and merely mean to show how I experience hope. When Jeff Goins introduced today's topic, he was talking about having hope that we writers would see the 500-word challenge through to completion. But, here's the thing--I cannot hear the word hope and avoid discussing my faith in Christ, which is the number one reason I have hope. 1 Peter 3:15 (the verse quoted at the top of this post) asks me to always be ready to give the reason for the hope that I have. The reason I have hope is that God connects with me, he connects me to other people who care for me, and he convicts me to care for others.