Living On Hope

Once upon a time...

I hoped and hoped and hoped for this and that and those things too, in my life until the day came where I said no more.

Is that a place you are familiar with, a place you have ever reached?

I give up Lord, take me now. What is the point. No matter how hard I try, I can't win. I only find myself deeper and deeper in the pit. No one cares. Everyone is pretending. Everything and everyone is fake.

One morning, must have been 16 years ago, while making the beds, I made a statement out loud to the Lord. "I just want to die and end it all" I had done a lot of thinking along those lines and had a lot of private conversations with the Lord in the previous months. He was the only one listening. I know that because all those nights of crying myself to sleep, I could sense His presence and knew He was gathering my tears in a bottle.

But it was at that breaking moment, when the grief and pain that were far too deep, leaving me with no words to silently or verbally speak, shot out of my mouth.

I felt so ashamed that the life God had given to me I would think so little off. Was I going to decide for God that is it finished and there was nothing more He could do.

It is another long story...but the short of that is, I made a conscious effort each moment of every day since then, to rebuild my thinking. I knew if I could do that, it would no longer matter what occurrences were happening the world around me and to me. I would define myself anew with what really mattered.


You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.

I will fulfill my vows to you, O God,
and will offer a sacrifice of thanks for your help.
For you have rescued me from death;
you have kept my feet from slipping.
So now I can walk in your presence, O God,
in your life-giving light.

Psalm 56:8, 12,13