As I came to the end of the most difficult year of my life I began reflecting on what remains when everything else falls apart. When the world falls apart and nothing makes sense anymore what can I hold onto? As I reflected on this I was reminded of the verse in Corinthians about faith, hope, and love.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
Hope is an interesting concept for us as human beings. I believe we are designed to instinctively put our hope in things. We make plans based on what we hope for. When I was pregnant I bought a stroller and decorated the nursery. I planned a baby shower. Now, none of these things were bad things (I had to prepare for the upcoming arrival of our son) but the problem is that when it doesn’t happen the way you expected you are more disappointed. It’s a natural human instinct to put our hope in things, especially when we believe they are what God has promised us. But that’s when our idea of hope can get blurry.
With everything that has happened in the last 12 months, I’ve wrestled with the idea of hope. I have hoped for things that I have seen happen but I have also hoped for things that have not happened or didn’t go the way I expected. I hoped that Phoebe (second twin) would survive and be healthy but that didn’t happen. I hoped that Oli would be well and that we would bring him home but that didn’t happen either. Those were big hopes and I fully believe that they were godly things to desire. The struggle for me was how to keep having hope after things had gone so wrong. How could I keep hoping in the midst of such devastating loss?
As I pondered this a deeper question emerged; do I really understand what hope is, and am I putting my hope in the right place? Many of us use hope in statements such as “I hope I get that promotion” and “I hope it doesn’t rain.” I’ve said many of these myself but I don’t think this grasps what hope is really about. Hope in an earthly sense is about expecting something to happen based on what we know. The problem with that kind of hope is that our knowledge only goes so far. We can’t see all the pieces and so when it doesn’t go the way we expected we feel let down. We can’t understand why God didn’t intervene and do something. After losing Oli I really struggled with the idea of hope because after losing the twins and then finding out I was pregnant again with Oli I had started to let myself hope again. I made plans based on the fact that Oli was going to be born and that I would be his mum. I started attaching things to what I was hoping for.
We look at verses like Jeremiah 29:11 and think that means that bad things won’t happen to us but that’s actually not the promise in the verse. The promise of the verse is that He knows the plans and that regardless of what we can see, he will continue to work for our good and that give us hope. But this kind of hope is different. This is the hope in who God is and that is something that won’t change.
After losing Oli I thought about the things that I knew God had promised me and what I could be sure of. When the world around you has been shaken you have to find what’s unshakeable. As I thought and prayed about this I realized that God never promised me that Oli would be okay or even that I would be pregnant in the first place. He did promise that he loves me and that he sent his Son to die so that I could live. He did promise me eternal life and that he would never leave me. So even though things didn’t work out the way I had “hoped” I’m learning how to trust and hope in who He is and not what I think he is going to do for me. And that kind of hope is like the hope spoken of in Hebrews 6:19 “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure”
It is something we can hold on to regardless of circumstances. His character never changes, so even when everything is shaken and the word falls apart we can hold onto the unshakeable.
And when we start to have this kind of hope it allows faith to rise within us.
The bible says “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11: 1). So it’s not about wishful thinking or about hoping for things that we have no guarantee of. Faith is an assurance in something and someone who has shown himself to be trustworthy. Faith is about trusting in a God that sent his son to die and who rose from the dead. Faith is knowing that we have salvation because of what he has done for us. It’s about trusting in the bigger picture about continuing to believe he has good things for me despite the painful events of the past few months. It’s trusting that one way or another God’s promises always come to fulfillment, but it is not always the way we thought. We can have faith in a God that love us and that will never change.
When I was growing up I was told that love is not just a feeling but a choice. There are days when I choose to love the people in my life even though they annoy me or make bad choices. But there is also a kind of love that I discovered this year that is unlike any other kind of love, and that is the love of a mother for her child. When I saw Oli for the first time there was no question about whether I loved him or not. The feeling was so overwhelming and so deep that I could never deny it. After losing him I began to reflect on the kind of love God has for us and the pain he must feel when we turn away from him. When you have loved someone that deeply, the pain of loss goes that deep, too. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for God to watch us turn from him after all he had given us. Although I cannot fully grasp the depth of love and therefore loss that God feels for his children, I feel like I’ve begun to get a glimpse of it. This year has given me a greater understanding of the kind of overwhelming incredible perfect love He has for us and how it reaches us in our darkest hours. The amazing thing about the kind of love He has for us is that it’s perfect. It has no faults. And that kind of love is like a light. It pierces through darkness and fear. Where there is light there is no room for darkness. Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space. As it says in 1 John 4: 18 “ Perfect love casts out fear”. God’s perfect love cannot occupy the same space as fear.
This year I have experienced things that I would have thought would have gripped me with an overwhelming and unending fear like losing the Ezekiel, Phoebe & Oli. But what I discovered is that even in the most painful and scary moments, if I allow God’s perfect love to occupy my heart, then there is no room for fear. The thing with this kind of love is that we have to allow it to occupy those spaces in our hearts where fear lurks. We have to give God permission to meet us in our fear with his perfect love. It might sound crazy but when I held Oli for the last time and said goodbye, I felt no fear. Instead, I felt completely enveloped by his perfect love.
In the days following Oli’s death, I have truly felt God’s love surrounding me all the time. Sometimes it is quiet and gentle, like his hand resting upon me, and sometimes it is powerful and overwhelming like a wave, but it’s always constant and it never fails me. So even though I come to the end of this year knowing loss and pain like I never have before, I also have experienced a love like never before. As I allow him to love me in the way only He can, my fear begins to disappear and hope begins to rise in my heart again. So as I stand on the edge of a new year I know that his love will continue to find me and that I can trust in His gracious plan for my life.
