I dare you to hope...

 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

In 2012, I began the journey to know God more, to really pursue Him. 

Along the way, Hope has been my life line. When things around me were dark, darker than a moonless sky, Hope was the anchor that kept me alive. 

Today, I took some folded laundry to one of my children's bed rooms. My throat closed up tight when I saw the mangled mess of sheets and underneath a worn, tattered bible. 

The memories came flooding back. 

Those nights, oh so many nights, I sat on the cold tile bathroom floor praying for a miracle for this child. 

It was not so long ago when I was sure the enemy would win the battle for this child. 

Really, it is not my story to tell, it is my child's. 

However, I can speak about the part that I went through. 

The waking up in a puddle of sweat, running to the child's room to make sure they were still breathing. 

Fear overwhelmed me for this child. 

Nightmares, so vivid that I would wake up screaming. 

The fear that this child would take their life overwhelmed me. 

Really, I had no reason to believe this would happen. The child had never mentioned such a thing...

But, I knew the sound of hopelessness. 

I knew the smell of it. 

In my early thirties, sitting in my shower, head buried between my knees, praying God would wash me down that drain. 

I knew the scary thoughts that would come to my mind. The thoughts that life would be better....without me here. 

I knew that you could love Jesus with all of your heart, but still have something wrong with your brain. When you would give your left and right arm to feel normal again. 

One day, I opened this child's prayer journal, the journal I insisted this child use, to document the feelings. To write to Jesus. To be able to look back on and see the Hand of God....

I shuddered. 

There in bold black ink the word...

Hopeless. 

That was almost three years ago. 

So, today, as I walked into this child's room, I saw firsthand the picture of Hope. 

That bible mangled up between covers and blankets..

Hope. 

A story I can relate to in God's Word...the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' robe. 

She had been bleeding for 12 years. TWELVE. 

Surely, she was hopeless. 

Surely, she was desperate. 

Hope won. 

As soon as she touched the hem, Jesus felt her touch. With all the crowd surrounding Him, He felt the healing power come out of Him. 

In the book Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors, she says this about the woman...

Hope is the great expectancy of this woman that Jesus will help her. Hope is our great expectancy that we will know Him in all our circumstances, even the seemingly hopeless ones. 

Hope is this mocked-by-the-world, nonsensical reaching through the crowd just to touch Him. To the cynical, it seems like a waste. Why reach in such a crowd? Everyone is touching Him. You're wasting your time. What if nothing happens? 

We risk great embarrassment to hope in this way, don't we? But the reaching shows something about the woman's heart, something about my heart: a faith undeterred by the world or our circumstances, a faith that believes in what we cannot see. My expectancy grows my heart toward God, grows room in my heart for more of Him, and allows me to see Him here, wherever here is. 

Jesus turns to her and says, "Your faith has healed you."

I believe Hope is what led her there. 

How about you?

What is it that you need to keep hoping for? Believing for a miracle for? 

Have you given up on God coming through for you?

In a strange way, I am grateful for those dark days I wrote about above. 

I never would have drawn so close to Jesus without those days. 

Suffering brings about something that nothing else can....Hope. 

What if we exercised our faith in this way? By hoping, by reaching, by showing God that no matter what our circumstances tell us, or what the world tells us...

He is our HOPE. And, He is enough. 

reaching for that hem, 

jill