When Hope Feels Lost...

I finished a whole cup of coffee this morning before getting ready. I love when that happens. The last gulp was still hot.

I have a million things on my plate. I feel slammed at work. Five classes. Four preps. And in the last seven days, I’ve graded hundreds of pages of documents ranging from reports to cover letters to instructions to topic proposals. I am presenting at an academic conference today, and I’m still making the final push to polish my manuscript and send it off to my first opportunity for a potential agent. 

I feel tired just typing that...

But this week, this morning, this verse keeps running through my head: “And now hope does not disappoint…” 

It’s actually a line that runs through my main character’s head as she struggles with the loss she faces and the emptiness she feels. A reminder—hope is not lost. 

I think God has it running through my head now. 

HOPE

Hope was His word for me on Jan 1, 2015. A Year of Hope. A dear friend bought me a necklace with those very letters inscribed on it. H. O. P. E. 

The necklace was my Christmas gift. A God gift. 

At the time, we had just lost our last two embryos—the two we hoped would become our children.

I didn’t feel very hopeful when I opened that gift.

Over the last ten months, God has shown me the power of hope—not in my circumstances, not in my desires, not in my outcome.

But in Him.

The rest of the verse says, “And now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who given to us.”

I cling to verses like Psalm 25:3: “Those who wait/trust/hope in the Lord will not be disappointed/put to shame/kept waiting.”

There are several ways to translate that verse, but what a promise!

Where is our hope? In Jesus.

Why? Because of God’s great love for us.
How? Through the Holy Spirit.

I've blogged before those wise words from my pastor: "if you're disappointed in the gap, then your faith is not in God. God does not disappoint."

His hope does. not. disappoint. 

Friend, if you feel disappointed today, put your hope in Jesus again.

Remind yourself who you are in Christ.

Remind yourself that you have God’s Spirit inside of you.

Remind yourself how much your Heavenly Dad loves you.

He really does. And He won’t disappoint. He won’t put you to shame. He won’t keep you waiting.

It took me almost two months before I could wear my HOPE necklace. But I wear it every day. And every day I am reminded I have hope in Jesus. 

From Ordinary to Extraordinary

Howell and I have been married for a little over seven years. I don’t want to gush, but in all sincerity, he is my greatest gift from God. We understand each other, even though our personalities are very different. I can’t remember the last time we had a fight, but it’s been weeks, maybe even months. I believe we have an extraordinary marriage, and when I really do think about it, I feel lucky.

But the Lord reminded me recently that our journey to get here was paved with grace and forgiveness and hard work—not luck. During our two years of dating, we probably fought every day if not every other day—about something. Anything. And our first two or three years of marriage seemed only slightly better.

I was constantly offended; my feelings were always hurt. Generally, our arguments were based on this: I hoped/thought/expected that he would do/be/say X. And when he wasn’t doing/saying/being X, my feelings were deeply hurt. Clearly he didn’t love me because he if loved me, he would say/do/be X. And since he didn’t say/do/be X, I shouldn’t trust him, respect him, or love him either.
It was exhausting—for the both of us.

But today, our marriage is a source of joy and a safe place because we have chosen to persist in two major areas: expectations and forgiveness.

One of my issues—the creation of false expectations—was closely related to our culture’s view of love—our very false, very misplaced presentation and consumption of love: that love is romantic and fairytale, that love says your man will be transformed and will eventually—and at all times—meet your greatest desires with the right lines and big gestures.

So I had a lot of expectations about marriage and about Howell. Most of them were uncommunicated, too, so they became guesswork for him.

When we would argue, I would shut down, waiting for him to say the right line—the magical words. Read the script, Howell!

Of course, he didn’t know what his lines were supposed to be.

I remember one fight—a pretty serious one—where I left the house. I went to a park. I was hurting, and my instinct in our arguments was always to run. But in Hollywood, the boy always follows. He knows instinctively where she is. So I sat, and waited, and eventually (more angry than before), I went back home where my husband was also hurting and stressed out and unsure of what to do. I hadn’t given him the script then, either.

So maybe Hollywood and our culture are to blame, but the real ownership on my part comes from recognizing that my expectations were for Howell—not Jesus—to be my everything: to fill me, complete me, know me fully inside and out, comprehend my every thought and desire.

There is only one perfect man, and His name is Jesus. He made the greatest gesture any man could ever make for us; He became the ultimate example of self-sacrifice. Nothing trumps that. Nothing.

God’s story for us is one of pursuit and redemption, of lavish gifts and sacrificial love. This is not an epic love story—it’s The Epic Love Story.

God is love.

I love my husband. And over the last almost nine years, our relationship has grown from initial attraction and interest to deep love and affection; it has, at times, been both passionate and romantic, and other times, both ordinary and comfortable.

But Howell cannot be the lover of my soul. He cannot fill all my desires. He can’t complete me or satisfy me or fill me.

Only Jesus can do all of that.

And the moment I put that expectation on Howell: I fail, he fails, and our relationship stops working. Who can live up to that pressure? Who can trump Jesus?

It may sound paradoxical—let Jesus have all my desires, and my desire for Howell will be greater. Let Jesus fill me, and my love for Howell will be fuller. But that’s precisely how it works.

Today, we do have an extraordinary marriage not because of luck but because we’ve chosen to fight for our marriage—to choose forgiveness and to release expectations. Walking out forgiveness is even more countercultural than our expectations for love.

Deep down, here’s the battle. I love my husband, and I know he loves me. I know that he’s not spiteful or mean-spirited. He never intentionally hurts my feelings or disappoints me. But in the moment, I also feel hurt or disappointed. So the battle is determining what to choose—to choose what I know or to choose what I feel. And on paper, this sounds easy.

Obviously, I should choose what I know. But in the moment of your hurt feelings or disappointment, it’s a much more difficult decision. You think, if I choose to resolve this now, he won’t know how big of a deal it was. Or, if I choose to forgive, it’s just the same as saying it’s okay—and it’s not okay. Actually, the greatest lesson we could have learned (and I really believe this) was to stop saying “it’s okay” altogether. To, literally, stop using those words, and instead to say “I forgive you.”

Forgiveness brings freedom to your marriage. When you take the steps to surrender that issue—whether big or small—God comes in and does the supernatural work of healing. God comes in and restores love and grace in your heart toward your spouse. If the issue is small, the process of forgiveness is often easier, quicker. You remember why you love your spouse, you remember to expect the best in them, and you remember that you don’t want to keep record of wrongs. And so, you surrender and you release.

If the issue is great, sometimes that process takes more time. But don’t lose faith in His supernatural power; God is a God who heals—physically and emotionally. He can make you whole and free. He alone can fill your every desire. And He can bring extraordinary love to even the most ordinary marriages.

Laura 

Note 1: this post originally appeared on the blog "Among Women." See the original version here. 
Note 2: all images on this post were found through Bing.com with a license listed as 'free to share and use.'   

Top FIVE Pieces of Advice at ACFW

Last week, I shared my top FIVE moments from ACFW, and this week, I wanted to share my top FIVE pieces of advice. 

I started getting nervous weeks before the conference. I don't like big crowds. I don’t like being in situations where I don’t know anyone. And I wasn’t very excited about the idea of pitching myself or my story to an agent. In fact, the thought made nauseated, so I quit thinking about it. The morning that I flew out, I sat in the airport and cried. I thought, Am I really doing this?

 

I arrived on Thursday morning, and to be honest, I was so overwhelmed with all the people, I hid in my hotel room. There were people everywhere, in the coffee shop, in the lobby, on the first floor—people with ACFW badges like me. But instead of introducing myself, I just retreated. I told the Lord, this is too much. 

Then Thursday afternoon we had our opening session and a time of praise and worship. I had to drag myself out of the room to attend, but I attended.  When the first song we sang was a Kim Walker-Smith song, I thought, Okay, I can do this. His presence surrounded me, and by the time we ended with a Bethel song, I told the Lord, I am right where I need to be. 

He gave me a word two years ago, in the fall of 2013: Brave. Before Bethel had the song You Make Me Brave, my Heavenly Dad was already saying, Be brave, my daughter. In worship on Thursday, He reminded me of that word. Be brave. So, I decided then that I would attend it all, I would meet people, and I would pitch my ideas. I would be brave. 

For those who might not be familiar with the conference, we sat in continuing education classes all day Friday. There were several to choose from, but in each class, we learned something about honing the skills for our craft. On Saturday, there were shorter workshop-style or presentation-style sessions on various topics ranging from working with agents, handling rejection, or creating compelling characters. During sessions on both Friday and Saturday, we had appointments with agents and/or editors, so people would slip out of a session and return frequently. I had four appointments, so I missed two parts of the Friday continuing education class, and portions of two of my Saturday sessions. 

But unless I was in an appointment, I was in ‘class.’ I kinda felt like a kid in a candy store. I love to learn—I always have, but learning about fiction writing captivated me. I didn’t want to be anywhere else, and I didn’t want to miss anything. I felt like a sponge. 

So… top FIVE pieces of advice:

5. Create a platform for yourself. I’ve already blogged about this, so I won’t belabor the point. But essentially I learned that I don’t have a platform, and I probably need one. J Step 1. Create a platform. Ha!

4. Decide to write, and, equally as important, decide to call yourself a writer. In her session, “Writing Is a Decision,” Kathleen Y’Barbo gave us great advice about being a writer—and the first part was deciding to write.  

3. Develop a story question for your work. I went to a workshop on Saturday titled “The Power of Story Question.” We learned that your story question is more than the ‘what if’ of your plot. The story question is a deeper question that readers identify with—an inner struggle that may not have an easy answer. My story question for Restless Heart might be something like, If God took everyone you ever loved, would He still be good? Is God trustworthy when it feels like you’ve experienced a life of disappointment and unexpected circumstances?

2. Hone your craft: perspective and dialogue. Kristen Heitzmann’s CE class on “Keys to Compelling Stories” entailed more advice than I can list in one point, much less a blog post—but I loved her discussion about these two elements in particular, perspective and dialogue. She gave us four grammar rules about perspective. I naturally followed some of these rules, but as I have been polishing my manuscript, I’ve been trying to pay special attention to syntax for each character’s perspective sections. She also gave us great tips about dialogue, especially ways to cut sentence length and match a more abbreviated speech pattern that sounds like the way we naturally talk.

1. Be patient and willing to change. I have to say—of all the advice I received in the workshops and classes, one of my biggest takeaways was this piece of advice. At the Friday morning breakfast, I sat next to Karen Witemeyer, a multi-published historical fiction writer. She shared her first experience with publishing her novel—and, to offer the short version, she was basically asked to cut her whole manuscript and re-write it based on a brief scene at the beginning of the novel. She had to completely re-envision—and rewrite—her novel to get it published. And it took a lot of time. In the end, it was worth it—but her attitude likely made all the difference.

Comment below and share your top five pieces of advice if you were at the conference! 

p.s. I've already put next year's ACFW dates in my calendar. :)