The Freedom Of Hope

 It never ceases to amaze me how seemingly ordinary places can so quickly become Grace-spaces - that unexpected glory can meet you in the mundane and transform your whole being with just a simple moment of holy. That a word or an action can alter how you think about everything...and who you want to become. 

Rain comes down and I'm sharing a meaningful conversation at the local state fair with a Marine Corps recruiter I've gotten to know over the past year. It was here, twelve months ago, in another rainstorm, that we first met and he, along with his fellow recruiters, made an open space in their busy lives for a heart that was still grieving. At the time, I was just over two years past the loss of my dear Alex and had been looking for a way to enter back into the Marine Corps family that had offered me so much over the years and with which I'd shared so many impactful memories - not only with Alex but also my many other Marine friends. 

These gentleman had been so kind to me, so friendly. Told me I was welcome in their offices anytime. That my story... as well as my loss...mattered to them and had a forever-place. For the past year, I'd marinated in the lesson they had taught me all those months ago: that togetherness happens when people love openly and authentically - when creating safety and belonging is the goal.

Now, a year later, we stand under the same tent-booth, catching up and trading stories and appreciating the connection that's been built since the first time we spoke. The conversation turns toward deeper topics and soon, we're discussing how you weather hard things: political and social tension, family division, personal loss or hardship. How do you keep believing the best is yet to come when everything around you seems to be falling apart? How do you survive and thrive when you're not sure if things will ever get better? 

He then pulls on close to 250 years of Marine Corps pride and tradition and tells me that partly why they've survived is because they always manage to maintain hope - hope in the Corps itself and the good people who run it, hope in the human spirit to triumph and succeed, hope in the fact that our great American Republic will always survive and things will be okay. They always are. But then he adds, "And that's part of what being free means - to be hopeful. You begin to cease being free the moment you stop being hopeful." 

Typical of a Marine, in two succinct sentences, he sums up what so much of life centers around... and I pause. He's right. 

Despair can become its own prison when you forget that He has risen and all seemingly impossible things are never final and the triumph of a resurrected Lord proves that all stories have the capacity to be redeemed, however hard. 

It's true in all aspects of life that you start to give up a little freedom when you allow fear and discouragement to take hold and let yourself begin walking down the road toward despair. All the people who have ever come through their worst tragedies and been stronger for them held onto the one thing they had left when they felt like they'd lost everything: hope. 

Hope that there was some good to be accomplished in this and it was not in vain.

Hope that they would be sustained through this nightmare and there would be grace to survive. 

Hope that there was a better day waiting on the other side of this darkness and the sun would, one day, rise again. 

Even as I say goodbye sometime later and continue on about my day around the fairgrounds, I can't shake the unique perspective this recruiter just showed me. I've never looked at it quite this way before, but I have to agree because you do feel the walls inside your soul closing in a bit at a time when you start to believe the lie that this pain is all there is. 

The ones who most grow through suffering are those who allow their souls to be expanded through the ache - who let the breaking strip them of their false beliefs and their blinded views and who see the cracking as means toward healing instead of a permanent fracturing of their identity. Who choose to trust in the sovereign intent of God instead of an evil one. Who stare down the fear-demons of their heart and determine they will not win. 

Despair kicks in the moment you begin to give in to the Enemy's age-old premise that God isn't enough. That all past faithfulness has dried up and this challenge, this loss, this pain is too much and will spell the end of you. When you look so much at the present hopelessness that you forget the Source of hope Himself. When you stop turning your eyes on Jesus and instead try to feel your own way through the dark alone. 

If you really want to remain free - free to dream and to live and to love and to learn - you have to set your sights on hope... eternal hope. living hope. Hope that comes from knowing, deep in your bones, that there is a steady Hand at the helm of all things and, even when it feels like nothing is okay and you won't be okay ever, you will... because He's there and He cares and He's said all will turn for your good if you trust Him. 

Hope and freedom go together. Because hope keeps you from succumbing to the grip of a dying spirit... from giving in to the lies and the fears and the insecurities that block you from knowing the truest love and the greatest joy and the fullest grace in abundance in all things - even the most difficult ones. 

As you have been born into Jesus, so you've now been born into hope - a hope that never dies because the cross and the grave are your reminders of that every. single. day. Regardless of what you walk through in this life, you walk it with a Savior who has felt your pain and come through victorious and that same power, by His Spirit, how lives inside of you to keep you believing when all you want to do is doubt or throw in the towel.

So, no matter what you may be facing, find a way to beat back the temptation to despair. It'll only lead you down a road you really don't want to go on. I'm not denying things may look bleak and impossible - they honestly might! But here's the thing that's true always: God. Likes. Bad. Odds. He does! He likes it when things get so hard and so bad that there's no other option but to leave it in His hands and have faith that He can work. He likes it when we run out of answers and solutions and come to Him with our brokenness and our pain and are forced to lean on Him so desperately that only He can get glory for the outcome. 

Just because things may seem harsh and you feel like quitting doesn't mean God is quitting and just because you may have given up on God doesn't mean He's given up on you... or your situation. 

Maybe He's just waiting on the right time to pull off a breakthrough. After all, the greatest miracles often lie on the other side of our most rock-bottom moments. Just around the corner of our deepest discouragement is where God's redemption is waiting for you and your circumstances. It may not look like what you expect, but it will be good and it will feel right and just and holy and true when you arrive there.