“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

-Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption.

I can remember sitting in my hospital bed.  The stifling shock of the nights event permeated my very being.  I felt lost, confused, grief-stricken and hopeless after losing my first born son only two weeks before his due date.  I had delivered Kael stillborn, and as nurses were taking care of me, I was supposed to begin recovering.   I remember all of our family were there, and visitors were waiting outside my room.  I didn’t want to see anyone…not anyone but the one person I couldn’t see or hold or feel anymore…my baby boy.

It was only that morning that I had been told the news that he was dead and there was no heart beating anymore.  I was to deliver him anyway…”God, where are You in all of this?  Do you see what’s going to happen?”  My heart broke that day.  If you’ve read my other blogs over the years, you know the rest of the story, AND about how God rescued me.  But this blog today is about how it all started with a little bit of hope.

While in my hospital room that first day, people came to visit and offer their sweet prayers for us and offer us their comfort.  There was one woman who came from our church…and in my despair I don’t even remember her name.  Honestly, I didn’t care who she was.  I was dead inside.  Looking back now I wish I had paid more attention.  She came to pray for me and she brought me a book that had helped her in a difficult time.  She was so sweet and I remember wishing she would go away.  Anyway,  this book was written by a group of women called “Women of Faith” and it was entitled “Hope.”  I had no idea what that book would come to mean to me.  I couldn’t help the way I felt then…but I wish I could tell her “thank you”.  Her simple act of visiting me and praying for me changed everything.

We were given over twenty books on grief over the weeks and months to come.  I read many of them, and finally decided  “I get it,” and didn’t pick up another one.  I was tired of reading about death, and dealing with grief.  I didn’t want to read about it anymore.  I wanted to read about Heaven and move on.  I wanted to think about where Kael was now, and focus on the road ahead of me… and it was then that my eyes landed on that book about hope that the woman had given me at the hospital. My faith had been shipwrecked, I knew that.  But I didn’t want to stay floating in the wreckage.  I wanted my faith to swim to shore!  As I picked up the book, God spoke to my heart and said, “You can start with hope.  There is no risk in that.  It’s the first step to believing that I love you more than you realize.”

So I began to read.  I read hope-filled story after story about God coming through and answering prayers and healing and loving, and as I read, I felt hope seeping in.  It didn’t happen overnight, but it was my start.  In Isaiah 43:2, God says, “when you go through deep waters, I will be with you.  When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.  When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up.”  God became my hope.  He rescued me.  I survived, and not only that, I have seen God’s incredible goodness to me and have come out on the other side stronger.  Not only that, but today I am head-over-heels in love with Jesus and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He loves me too!

Life is full of tough seasons…I don’t need to tell anyone that.  But, I am often reminded of God’s hope, and so I thought I would share it with you today.  When the worst in life happens, there is a loving God who will walk through it with you as He did with me.