the string of Hope

Suffocating. Fingers around my throat. Inescapable. Trapped in static. Paralyzed.

These are the words that you can find floating around inside of my mind when I am asked to describe what I feel about nameless haunts in my life.

Do I say them? Perhaps in written words, but never aloud. No, speaking them aloud would be pain beyond measure. Dipping someone else's cup into the tar of my soul.

Oh, how terribly selfish and dramatic that would be.

And so the fist around my neck pulls me deeper into the dirt that is my home, these feelings. A grave I have begun to make.

How do I become set free of this pain? How do I shine redemption in such sticky black darkness and grief?

When I look at my life's work, of which there is not much except scattered poems, I cringe. How painful it has been. You would scarcely know I am washed by His blood by reading them.

I am in awe of how well of a job I have done at covering my freedom in this pain.

I wonder to myself, how can I share this pain: which is raw and all the stricken adjectives I have said before, but also share the Truth -- of which there is joy and hope?

How can I show someone that life can be choking, dirty, paralyzing, and restless, but still have joy and hope?

How? For they (namely, joy and sorrow) are the antithesis of one another. How can I marry them? How can I plead their case?

How can I justify the wandering and the finding?

There is but one way.

The Way.

Jesus captures the pain that life awaits to bestow on us. He was betrayed by a kiss, wore a crown of thorns, carried a splintered cross, felt nails through His bones and nerves, spit and sweat running through His wounds, and gave His soul for everyone else's.

But Jesus...

Lived a beautiful life. Generosity, healing, hosting, loving, guiding, saving. Jesus at His worst point still asked for the forgiveness of His accusers.

How did he marry these?

He knew what lay ahead for him.

He had hope.

At this point, there may not have been joy. But there was hope. And hope is not just heartache, as so often it seems to be. Perhaps misplaced hope is... but Jesus had hope in God. And that is hope never misplaced.

God cannot lie. God is steadfast. Therefore one who hopes in God cannot be let down. (See Hebrews 6:13-20).

He wished to be free of the affliction (see Luke 22:42) just as you and I have, but He chose to stay because we needed Him to. He chose to obey God's call on His life, even though it was terrifying. He knew how important His sacrifice was.

He did it for our salvation.

A promise from God, a holy hope born for us out of Jesus' own holy hope in God's plan.

And what came from the hope? Joy.

He is risen!

Hope is fulfilled with the promise, abounding in joy. And now we have that very same hope. A holy hope, placed with the weight of Jesus' death behind it.

So, despite the mud in each of our lives, how can we not tie joy and sorrow together with The string of hope?

How can we not chase hope, when hope was bought by blood?

And not just hope, but true freedom and salvation--the joy of hope fulfilled.

We are washed clean.

And so, my new goal, what I will strive to do in my future writing and in my pain is to find the string of hope.

Choosing hope is a privilege. I have the freedom to hope because I have been given the gift of salvation.

I can now hope for the good to come, despite the mess. I can be joyful because this hope is not misplaced. And the beauty of that sets me free.

In my affliction, I will be patient, I will hope with jubilance (Romans 12:12), and I will encourage others to hope.

No longer will my writing be marred with simply the deepest crushings of my soul. But the string of hope will shine through them.

Sorrow cannot be reconciled without hope and joy. Hope and joy cannot be obtained without the pits of sorrow.

Both are necessary.

But hope keeps us alive.

Who wants to join me in choosing hope?