Looking for Hope Road

Chapter 1

You are not being punished!

God does care!

My maternal grandmother’s chipper behavior used to annoy me tremendously at times. Probably because I was a pensively cynical teenager, who just wanted to be left alone. If she wasn’t waking me up early on Saturday mornings to go grocery shopping, only to stop at every garage sale along the way (one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the early bird catches the worm, yada-yada-yada), she was waking me up early on Sunday mornings to gospel music blaring and her confidently singing along. Which I must say was melodiously beautiful, because she had an amazing voice, but I wanted to sleep!

She would sweep the sidewalk in front of our apartment building (Which I thought was ridiculous because everyone used it.), but when questioned as to why she did it, she would say, “You have to take pride in where you live, even if it’s a cardboard box.” She had an opinion about everything, and when she wasn’t commenting on my pore posture or clothing choices, it was about the sour look on my face she claimed was always present, she would say, “Nique smile when you answer the phone, the person on the other end can hear it.” I used to think to myself, ‘Really, for real Grandma, for real.’

She spoke to everyone in passing, and carried on conversations with absolute strangers wherever we went. At times I thought she was absolutely nuts. So when she finally entrusted me with her life’s story. I was floored and amazed that she was still standing, let alone singing. I asked her how she was able to overcome so much adversity and heartache, and she said, “Sometimes I feel like I’ve been dealt a bad hand in life, and at times it really gets to me, but just like choosing to play a game of cards, you have to make the most of the hand you’re dealt. It’s my life, do I accept defeat when trials and struggles arise, or do I live it to the best of my abilities, because I know that God will do the rest.” My grandmother’s faith was immeasurable.

It’s hard to understand sometimes how our unfortunate situations can bare such drastic consequences. I often times find myself pondering over why bad things happen to good people and it baffles me as to why a wise and loving God would ever allow it. How could a seemingly small mistake or poor choice have such a perpetual impact on life? We say to ourselves, if God truly loved me, he wouldn’t take me through this mess, or if he were as forgiving as they say, he would help me. I pray and pray, and nothing changes. Why did God let this happen? Do any of these statements sound familiar to you?

During my research, I came across a website called experience project.com, and I was amazed by the sheer number of people struggling with feelings of extreme inadequacy. Whether it was in life, relationships, or occupational stressors, people felt they were being punished. They had been dealt a bad hand, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, it seemed never ending, and I soon realized a recurring theme in every situation, many of the stories resonated: hopelessness.

Of course in life, there will be many situations we have to endure. Many that we have to accept and be accounted for, because in the end everyone will stand and face the consequences of their life’s actions, but there is no need to feel hopeless. The enemy may lie in wait, setting traps to ensnare you, but Christ came to set us free. 10 “The thief does not come except to steal and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” In the tenth chapter of John, Jesus told the disciples that that was His sole purpose in life. He is the gate, and whoever enters through Him will be saved. You will be able to come in and go out, you will find everything you need. So why do we allow ourselves to sink so low as to believe in our hearts and minds that God doesn’t care, when it’s quite the contrary, because he loved us enough, to send his only son into the world to save us all. But aside from that, (which for me is everything, I’m biased of course) lets look a little deeper to unearth the truth. Why do we stress over things that are beyond our control, and spit and spew profanities over the situations that we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Truthfully, we have a tendency to get in our own way. Whether it’s deliberate because of bad decisions or poor choices, or mistakenly due to judgment errors or flawed reasoning. We say to ourselves, “ I thought I was doing the right thing, how could I know that this would happen?” What if you get laid off from work, or you or someone you love falls terminally ill; will you give up or press on? Many of us will face life-altering moments and feel as if we can’t go on.

No matter how life’s struggles happen, they will all have the same catastrophic effect if we allow them to derail us. Wouldn’t it be within reason to remain calm and assess our problems to determine the best outcome? Instead of embracing the pessimistic view, choose to remain optimistic. Instead of seeing the glass as half empty, recognize it as being half full. You think to yourself, I am trying to remain positive, but its easier said than done because my life is a mess.

It takes faith to grab and hold onto the positive things in life, because; “1 Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. 2 Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. 3 By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.”