Stories of Hope: Alison Gibson

This is part of the series "Stories of Hope," in which ordinary people share how hope makes them live differently. To read the introduction, click here. If you have a story of hope you'd like to share, why not send me a message?

Alison Gibson is one of my dearest friends. We grew up in the same small town in the Northwest Territories - her mother was my kindergarten teacher! Our slightly different ages meant that we didn't actually spend time together in our youth, but all these years later we have settled not five minutes from each other here on Prince Edward Island. I'm thankful for her friendship and her insight into life lived with God, and life lived with hope. She says, "hope is about Jesus, not about me!"

The word "hope" can be thrown about recklessly. I do it all the time. "I hope it is sunny tomorrow." "I hope Sobey's has butter on sale soon." "I hope that warning light on the van doesn't mean anything serious."

I have hoped more desperately for many things, things that truly mattered to me. Two years ago, when I was almost 11 weeks pregnant I hoped that the signs of miscarriage were wrong. I have hoped through 14 years of marriage that my husband would be healed of the mysterious illness that plagues him. I have hoped for relationships to be mended, for stress to decrease, for more time, for more money when income and expenses just didn't balance out. I have hoped for stability and a 'home' for my children through many moves across 3 countries and 3 provinces.

None of these hopes is wrong, but as the circumstances of life play out there is inevitably grief and disappointment when some hopes are not fulfilled, if we have set our hearts on them. As if this isn't hard enough, like the grief over a baby I will never hold, I have discovered that even a hope fulfilled can feel... empty. If I hope for years that I will one day have a 'home' and then finally arrive, only to discover that the home has its flaws, what then? If I hope for the new job, the new baby, the husband, the holiday and then those things happen, or they come and go, and I still feel a gnawing discontent, what then?

In all earthly, human hope like this there is a sense of waiting. This is the hope that says, "One day... If only...." But there is another hope. This hope is a gift from God. The waiting is completed in Christ Jesus. As the Israelites in the Old Testament hoped for deliverance, they looked to the day prophesied when the Messiah, the Saviour would come. All would be different then. If only He would come! As Christians this side of the resurrection, we look back on hope fulfilled. We can live in the present of hope fulfilled.

We need this true hope. It doesn't fade. It isn't swayed by the winds of circumstances. It is always fulfilled. Not later. NOW.

We almost need a different word for this kind of hope. Hope that is so real it supports us. It is not a mild mannered hope. It stands defiantly against the suffering thrown at us. It is a bulwark standing firm against the enemy attack.

How do we live in hope, immersed in a place of contentment? Romans 5 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

We have a choice when suffering hits us. We can choose to walk through the suffering with God and allow Him to shape us through it, or we can struggle on in our own strength. True endurance is not picking ourselves up time and again when we get knocked down. It is continuing to believe that God is good. God is faithful. God is our ever present help in times of trouble. If we choose to seek God in times of suffering, we encounter a shift in perspective. We begin to hope less for our own comfort and hope more for the glory of God to be revealed in our lives.

My hope can be summed up in one word. It is always fulfilled. It is sustaining. It is true. It is eternal. It is "Jesus."

But how I hear you say. There is only one answer that I know of. No shortcuts. It is to look for the presence of God in all your circumstances. He is there, but you need to see Him. Praise Him. Thank Him. Listen for His voice.... and crucially believe that He is good even when everything around you feels so, so bad. His presence changes everything.

I am writing this the day before the 2 year anniversary of my baby, at 12 weeks gestation, being born. When I was having labour pains, lying alone and afraid in the spare room of the house we were living in, I cried out to God, "This hurts so much, but the pain is for nothing!" God answered, "The labour pains speak of life. Your baby is not dead, she lives with me."

That same day, as the labour pains progressed, I prayed about the baby I would never meet this side of death. I believed God had said the baby was a girl but prayed for a name. I wanted the baby to have a name that meant "love" for I already loved her so much! I thought that later, I could search for such a name. A few hours later, my brother was praying for me over the phone and the name "Amanda" flashed into my mind. When I looked it up, I found that it means "She who must be loved." God himself had named my baby.

Do I continue to grieve? Yes. I have experienced deep sorrow. Yet somehow, God's voice spoken into the darkness brings assurance. I have thrown myself into God through this pain and He has answered. If tempted to doubt His goodness, I read Scripture that speaks otherwise. I pray with a soft heart.

When I first went to emergency at the start of the miscarriage, I continued to "hope" the baby would live. I prayed desperately, "Lord, let her life make an impact and glorify God."

This prayer has been answered... in the true hope that has been birthed in me. Jesus' presence changes everything.

Stories of Hope: Judy Gillis

This is the first in a series of "Stories of Hope," in which ordinary people share how hope makes them live differently. To read the introduction, click here. If you have a story of hope you'd like to share, why not send me a message?

Judy Gillis is someone I am honoured to call friend, someone who has been into the valley of the shadow of death and has come out the other side somehow radiant. If you've ever dealt with deep loss, her story will resonate. You'll find out what hope looks like to her. Thanks for sharing, Judy! 

Today, I saw someone I hadn’t seen in quite a few months. As we were catching up, we got to talking about the car accident, the one that instantly took our youngest daughter’s life back in October 2013, the one that turned all of our lives upside down. My friend had seen the notice in the paper and wanted to know a few details. I'm okay talking about it... now. 

Of course, whenever I talk about it, I still have to kind of separate myself from the fact that I’m talking about my baby girl. She was 21 … far from home, living in her car, trying to make  her way in the world, and trying to find a place to live. She was so tired; she fell asleep at the wheel … and losing her was harder than any one event I’ve ever had to go through. And yes, there are times – many times – I long to feel her arms around me, to hear her laughter or to see some of the zany facial expressions she used to come out with.

But … so many amazing things have happened that we could never have predicted – so many people have been touched and helped by her story that there is a part of me that understands (in some small way) some of why God welcomed a homeless girl into the best home she could possibly imagine!

I often thank God that He reached down into her heart and showed her that He is real, that she embraced Him only a little over a month before she died. We were able to share wonderful things with each other in those last 35 days. She still had a lot of rough edges (but then again, so do I. So does everyone.) Her conversion – her “white light” experience as I sometimes call it - has given me such comfort. Knowing that right now she is happier than she ever could have been here, and that I will see her again, helps me get through the tough times when I see someone who looks like her, or I hear a song she used to sing off-key on purpose just to make me laugh. The tears spring to my eyes … and that’s okay. It’s okay to miss her. It’s okay.

I get to tell her story often, and in the telling, I heal a bit more because her story reminds me that no life ever goes unnoticed. Every person has great worth. God is still in control, even when it seems like life is crazy and the pain is so great and so senseless. The very areas in which I have been wounded - those self-same hurts, that grief, those tears – God takes those and turns them around for good … so that when someone else is going through a hard place, I can empathize and come alongside that person with assurance that “He’s GOT this.” It’s not just words. It’s real. He is really there.

That’s really what hope is. It’s not the “I hope I win the lottery” kind of hope. It’s a knowing, a settled feeling, a sense that all is well. It’s a deep-seated assurance, based on a personal and vital experience with God. She had that. She had such a child-like faith, a calm assurance that everything was going to be all right – and I believe that if she wanted to leave a legacy behind, it would be that “I-know-so because He-said-so” kind of rock-solid confidence. That’s the kind of hope that is an anchor for the soul. He gives that.

So many times, I hear people say to me that God took our little girl (for one reason or another, maybe He needed another angel … or whatever the case may be). My hope, my trust in Him is not based on some arbitrary version of a God who would “take” someone, who would rob a parent of a beloved child. It might be seen as a matter of semantics, but I believe that God didn’t “take” her; He knew she was coming and He welcomed her home.

More than ever I believe that He is love. More than ever before, I believe that He is in control, that He works all things – even the seemingly horrible ones – together so that we can be more like Him (which is the best good there is!) I’ve seen Him do way too much in too many people’s lives (including my own) to believe otherwise.

Like today – my friend heard me talk about the accident, how the peaceful and tangible presence of God was in that car that night, and she felt what she described as “goosebumps” all the way down to her feet. I was able to give her my blog address on one of her appointment cards, and tell her how to find the posts I linked to, above, so that she could find out more about the few weeks prior to the accident. She thanked me and put the card in her pocket after writing my name on it beside the blog address.

This kind of thing happens quite a bit. God opens doors for me to share how amazing He is, and I just walk through them. And I am so very glad He does it.

You can read more about Judy's journey at her blogs Get Unwrapped and Iconoclastic. 

~lg

Sharing Stories of Hope

"One who has hope lives differently." (Pope Benedict XVI)

Hope.

It's been a red letter word for me. When God first spoke it to my soul over a year ago, it was whispered into a place of disappointment.

I took heart. I took it as a promise that things would change. And they did, but not in the way I first expected. In fact, those circumstances remain unaltered. Yet God's word still stands. Because of that, I've been holding on to hope. I've been listening for it other ways. I've been looking for it in unexpected places. I've been noticing how "one who has hope lives differently."

The world around me abounds in hopeless, or, at the very least, hope-shrunk, situations. But hope is a watchword for our time, a banner unfurled, streaming down the mountainside with beautiful news.

The more I look, the more I see it. People who have every right to be discouraged, disappointed and downtrodden, yet continue to live with this buoyant hope. They live differently. This is good news worth sharing, and I'd like to share some of their stories with you.

Tomorrow I will introduce my first guest blogger in a series of "Stories of Hope." She is someone I am honoured to call friend, someone who has been into the valley of the shadow of death and has come out the other side somehow radiant. If you've ever dealt with deep loss, her story will resonate. You'll find out what hope looks like to her.

If you have a story of hope to share, why not send me a message? Maybe you'd like to add your own red letters to the blog series.

"Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given us." (Romans 5:5) 

~lg