"It Might be Hope"

October 3, 2008
Seems like one would learn, after all these years, that if you “wait” until that perfect time, one would never get anything done. I wanted to “post” in order and add my “moments” from the beginning and so I waited…and I waited…and suddenly I realized that life was passing me by and by waiting for the “right” time, the “right” way, I was letting my ideas, once again, get in the way of God’s call. So, back I come, with so much in between. But time will take care of that which needs to be said.
There is a song, by Sara Groves, It Might be Hope. The first time I heard it, I was floored.
You do your work the best that you can
you put one foot in front of the other
life comes in waves and makes it's demands
you hold on as well as your able

You've been here for a long long time

Hope has a way of turning it's face to you
just when you least expect it
you walk in a room
you look out a window
and something there leaves you breathless
you say to yourself
it's been a while since I felt this
but it feels like it might be hope

Her words carried the depth of my soul. In the last few years it has been amazing how God has used music to encourage me along this journey. The list of songs is remarkable and each one has come into my life at just the right time. Sara Groves came into my life just as my heart was beginning to feel what I hadn’t felt “for a long, long time.”
Don’t get me wrong. I had hope. I just didn’t feel hope. And there is a big difference in those two. “Faith is believing in those things unseen,” and I was believing and holding on to hope with all I had. And God kept encouraging me along the way. He listened as I struggled and agonized over the crisis, trauma and grief period of the last seven years. And He gave me the strength to hang on and “put one foot in front of the other.”
Sara Edwards said it well when speaking of her son, Wade’s death. I don’t remember her words exactly, but she said something like this, “if I had lost a leg, no one would ask me if I was over it.” A visible part of you is gone and it’s obvious one would still be contending with the loss every day. Yet you learn to get around the loss. You would learn new ways to walk, new ways to cope and new ways to accommodate for the loss, while learning to live a full and meaningful life again. You look down and your leg is still gone, and there are times you get tired and frustrated and you wish your leg was there. You look back and remember what life was like before it was gone and wonder what it would be like if you never had lost it. Most people can understand that. They can see the missing part and be cognizant that you are still dealing with your loss.
When you lose a child, you lose a piece of your heart. You lose a part of your being. You lose hopes and dreams. Your family loses a “leg.” But that is really invisible to most. It is easy for others to put in the back of their minds, for whatever reason.
And then, as if that is not enough, you find yourself on the side of the road for two and a half hours, waiting, begging, screaming at God, at your deceased child, to send his girlfriend, Allison back, uttering in disbelief, that God would want to take, her and yet another child from us as you don’t know if your child will even make it. For two and a half hours, you pace, you shake, you scream, you moan, your body does all it can to cope as emergency personnel struggle to stabilize your child and come up with a plan to get him up the 130 foot embankment to the ambulance that will take him to the Life Flight helicopter waiting down the road. And for 23 days, you go from operation to operation, searching the faces of doctors, looking for a glimmer of hope, all the while hanging on to God’s WORD, because that’s all that’s left within you.
The loss, the horror, the surreal, has become your life and there is an overwhelming fear of what may be around the next corner. People, in their ignorance, say the most ungodly things. Others avoid you because they don’t know what to say. And you put it out there like that missing leg, because that’s life! You would give a leg or two, to have it all back, the way it was. Elliot and Allison, alive and working through what their relationship would be. The trauma of living on the brink of death and coming to at the bottom of the ravine and hearing that she is gone, erased from your surviving son’s memory. Yeah, you would give a leg or two, to have it all erased.
Yet you learn to get around the loss. You learn new ways to walk, new ways to cope and new ways to accommodate for the loss, while learning to live a full and meaningful life again. There are those who aren’t scared of the reality. They listen, they support, they “see” the missing pieces and they hang in there with you. And one day out of the blue:
Hope has a way of turning it's face to you
just when you least expect it
you walk in a room
you look out a window
and something there leaves you breathless
you say to yourself
it's been a while since I felt this
but it feels like it might be hope

It’s a little scary at first. It’s new. Hope. You feel it. It has been so long. You put one foot in front of the other, cautiously. And you wonder, “is it safe?” And it seems like a whole new feeling.
That which you waited for, seven years earlier, has finally come to being. A new church home, a job, a movement towards a meaningful future, the soul-satisfaction of hearing true happiness in your child’s voice, not just once, but each time you hear it across the distance, and you suddenly realize that, yes! It is hope that you feel.
No, you never get over the loss. It is such a major part of you…gone. But you learn to accommodate it and live a life of fullness, knowing the losses and the trauma will always be a part of who you are. That those who are gone, will never leave you. Yes, it makes you different, but our God is a loving and faithful God. He is faithful! And in the moment that the hope you have been believing for, hits you in the heart…oh what an awesome, incredible , and faithful God who loves us! He IS Hope!
To God be the glory!
Lynn