People, hope, and a room

     A couple of weeks ago, I was crumbling.  I was falling apart inside.  I wanted to fall apart outside.  I came way too close to walking away and giving up.  I just hurt all over, inside and out, and I couldn't see hope anywhere.  If this journey was going to hurt so much and require more courage than I have, I needed a hope I could not find no matter how hard I strained my eyes to see.  Hope that the hurt would heal and the courage would come and the crumbled pieces would be rebuilt was beyond my grasp.  It was too abstract and out there, so to speak.  If it was there, I was too weak to hold on to it.

     Then hope started to find me again but in a way I did not expect.  I was far too fragile to hold on to hope myself, so God sent hope to me in a very tangible way...hope came in the form of people.

     I have come into contact with a few different types of people since being able to tell someone what happened for the first time.  There are plenty of people who simply do not know my story or the journey I'm on.  My story and my journey are not for everyone to share with me.  Of the people who do know, there are three general categories they fit into.

• people who hurt
• people who help but give up
• people who help and refuse to leave

     I don't lump people into the first two categories to be mean, and I hold no grudges against them.  I honestly believe that those who have hurt me once they knew were really trying their best to help.  I simply came to them with wounds they did not understand, and in their lack of understanding, they unintentionally caused more hurt.  Those who helped but gave up I also believe were just trying to help but found themselves in waters they could not navigate.  But each time someone said "that's enough, let's move on," it still cut a little deeper and left me more hopeless.

     The third group of people is by far the smallest group.  I only found people in that group within the last year or so of my life even.  While the abundance of people in the first two groups crushed what hope I had with every additional hurt and every walking away, the third group of people are living for me what hope is.  

     I am finding that when hope becomes abstract and too hard to hold onto, hope becomes tangible in the people who aren't walking away.  I'm finding that when hope is there but I'm too frail to cling to it, I see and hear and feel hope in the people who are walking this difficult journey with me.  Hope finds me in people because the people who are hope for me are overflowing with the care and love that comes from the only true Hope Giver.  They can be hope for me because they know the One who gives us hope.  When they love me as God loves me, His hope finds me in the middle of my crumbling, panicked, hurting soul that is drowning in hope-killing doubt.  He gives me hope in the people He sends to walk with me.

    

     The poem I am sharing with you now is what hope is like for me right now.  I have been trapped and chained by my past, and I liken that to being stuck in a dark room.  Hope was impossible until an actual person...someone I could see, talk to, listen to, touch...came into my room and sat down with me...gentle, loving, unafraid and unwilling to leave the room without me.  

     There are a few people who are the "someone" in the poem.  I am grateful for each one of them.  They are physical examples of a hope I find too abstract.  They are hope seen, heard, touched, and felt.  My dark room is still very dark, but slowly, one day at a time, it is getting lighter.  One day, with those who live out His hope before me, I will walk out of my room.  That day is not yet here, but His hope lived out in His people steady me on rocky ground and help me trust that day will come no matter how long it takes.

The Room

Chained alone in a room where horrors prevailed

The darkness has swallowed the truth of her tales

Though years have passed and the danger is gone

Trapped and haunted by memories, she can't move on

Countless people walk by but none of them see

The depths of her darkness or the room she can't leave

As life moves on despite her desperate hope quickly fades

She's stuck in a corner resigned to this place

She used to cry out hoping someone would care

Though she soon found out that no one would dare

To venture into her darkness hardly seemed worth the risk

Silence drowning her out, she's forgotten in the pit

Then one day someone comes and sits down beside her

Seeing past all her shame to the value inside her

Unafraid of her pain and brave in her dark

Gently, with love, this someone tends to her hurts

Persistent and patient, fighting her lies with truth

Bit by bit this someone shines light into her dark room

Time moves on as someone lives what hope, what love is

Being for her, for the first time, the hands and feet of Jesus

This someone remains and will not leave her until

She has strength to stand up and, together, she'll walk out healed