Hope Endures and Never Fails

What is hope?

2 Corinthians 4:16 explains how I view hope in a very clear and concise way:

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” -2 Corinthians 4:16 (NIV)

I was talking to a friend the other day and as I started to share some of what I have been struggling with, he said to me that he had absolutely no idea. He said that whenever he saw me in the past few years, I was extremely happy, always smiling, always laughing.

There is a huge battle raging inside my heart, mind and soul every single day.

I have been literally weeping on and off for the past few days. Memories have been flooding into my mind of events that I have tried to run away from.

The moment I saw the eviction notice on the front door of my house as a teenager is one of those moments. At the time, I literally felt that my life was wasting away. I had an open case with DYFS (District of Youth and Family Services- the child protective services agency in NJ) in which I was receiving help to try to be put in a foster home. My case worker met with me at my school and told me they were closing my case, even though I did not have a home. She basically said I was too old to put in a foster home. I grew up watching every member in my family get arrested. There is a reason that I was told by many people that I belonged in a foster home.

When we were evicted, I remember going into my room and just crying for an extremely long time, not knowing where I was going to go. All I knew was that I wanted to be as far away from anybody in my family as I possibly could.

Throughout the next few months, I lived out of a suitcase as I went from home to home. That year, I think I stayed in about 7 or 8 different homes of friends. I lost count.  I am extremely thankful that I did not have to live on the streets, but there were definitely challenges to not having a stable place I could call my home.

When we finally did move back into an apartment, the tension was extremely high. That escalated as news came that my oldest brother committed suicide. We will never know exactly why he did it, but he spent most of his life in and out of jail for dealing and abusing drugs, along with other related crimes.

Sometimes this life feels like a huge war. I was blamed for my brother’s suicide and some of that has led to the turmoil I still feel. At my brother’s wake, one of my family members screamed at me right in front of his casket.

I rarely ever open up to anybody about the constant memories I deal with. I do have some very good moments in my life when I feel completely in God’s presence. It is those moments that continue to give me the hope I need to keep going.

It is not that I fake being happy- it’s just that it is so difficult to let people into the deep hurt and pain that I have endured and that I feel as the memories come flooding back. I do not want people to have to feel those feelings with me. I know that God understands and that He cries and weeps with me.

Hope, to me, is knowing that everything is going to be okay even when your heart, mind, soul and especially the world tell you differently. It is something that sometimes makes absolutely no sense when you are going through a huge storm in life but it is hope that reminds me that I have a future in God.

God truly is my strength, my hope and my stronghold. The few people who I have opened up to about some of my past sometimes ask what keeps me going. Without a doubt, it is God’s love in my life. At various points in my life, I have felt completely hopeless but out of nowhere, not making any sense, I feel a sense of hope and peace. I know that I will and can keep moving forward- that God will make a way where I only see darkness, that God will provide the strength I need when I feel extraordinarily weak.