Hope.

    

     I don't know about you but, I've had my heart broken. Not just by love, but by life. Life has a way of breaking our hearts in ways we didn't even realize were possible. Your husband or wife decides that they no longer love you and don't want to be with you anymore. A loved one passes away. You lose your job and there isn't another one for months. With these examples, it's very easy to understand how your heart could break. But what about the ones that are small? What about the little cracks that build? They build on top of each other until your heart finally breaks.

     When your heart finally breaks from these little cracks, it feels as if it shatters into a thousand pieces. It almost feels, in my experience, worse than if it had been a clean break. From here, for me, I want to slide into a deep depression. I want to give up and not deal with anything. I want to question everything. Was it as good as I thought it was? Were things how I thought they were? Was I an idiot for believing that things could have been good? But, I so desperately want to hope.

     As many heart breaks as I have had (and there have been many), there is a little whisper from God that calls me to hope. To hope not in the circumstance or what can be seen, but to hope in what I cannot see. To hope and trust that in the power of God, I can guard my heart. To hope in Jesus. The lover of my soul. The keeper of my heart. To hope and believe in the promises of the Almighty God-My papa.  To hope that things will get better because of the merciful, compassionate, gracious God that I serve. Even though life hurts and our hearts break, there is hope. Hope in Jesus. Son of the Almighty God. And those that Hope in the Lord will never be put to shame.

     So, as you are reading this, I encourage you to Hope in God. Hope in his promises. Everything won't go the way we want and yes, our hearts will get broken. But every time we hope, we will learn how to better guard it. Not to guard it to become hard or cold. But to guard it with fierce intensity and the love of Christ. And soon, we will become, as Joyce Meyer calls us, a prisoner of hope. That no matter what happens, we can hope in God and never be put to shame. I WANT TO BE A PRISONER OF HOPE!

God bless,

DeeMarie