This is a question I find myself asking more often than not… While I’m driving down the street and see people with no homes, some standing on corners with signs asking for any kind of help someone might be able to offer, others selling their bodies, their souls to get enough money to feed the addiction they suffer from. Parents who’ve lost children, children who’ve lost parents, providers who’ve lost their means of provision, sick people, hurt people… Everywhere you go, if you pay attention, the people around you are going through or have been through something that has left them in desperate need of something to find hope in. This world we are living in today is a crazy and often scary place to be, it doesn’t matter who you are, or how prepared you may be; none of us are exempt from heartbreak, tragedy, and uncertainty. Without faith in God, where does one find hope?
Last month, my husband, kids, and I took our maiden voyage to Ireland to visit our daughter and new son-in-law. It was the longest plane ride we’ve ever been on, and prior to it, we were all a little nervous. Some of us more than a little; it was me, I spiraled. For days, I walked around checking things off my to-do list with a foreboding sense of dread. “What if this is the last time I love on my dogs, feed and nurture my barn animals, talk to my family/friends”? I what-if’d myself into a panic, “Oh no, we need to update our will”! Right up until time to leave for the airport, I let myself be tortured by what could go wrong, vs. feeling the excitement I should’ve been experiencing. I was still reading my Bible app daily, keeping my head straight by my own standards, but the enemy doesn’t care about that; in fact, those are the opportunities that make him come for us more. After all, his job is to steal our joy, right? I finally realized that when we got to the airport and were told that our flight had been cancelled due to severe weather at our connecting flight’s destination, and I watched the wind being knocked out of my family’s proverbial sails. As I’ve always done, I immediately went into damage control, trying to reassure everyone that it would be okay, while silently praying that it really would. After losing an entire vacation day due to travel delays, we finally made it to Ireland. As soon as I saw our daughter in the airport waiting for us with a sign bearing the favorite alias our family uses, the worry and anxiety melted away.
Only our daughters and their men had ever done any European traveling, so it was a new world for the rest of us, and while it was so different in many ways, it was also filled with the same kind of people we have here at home; the HUMAN kind. Their ways are different, but they still face the same struggles and challenges as we do, and we all share the same hearts’ desires: to be loved, to be treated with kindness and respect, and to have hope for the future. It’s the reason I started this blog: to spread the good news, the hope of our Lord and His goodness to people like me, people who mess up but want to know that it’s normal and okay, that they’ll be loved despite that. It’s the one thing that keeps me going when I fear that I can’t, and now I’m beginning to see just how far it can reach, and I’m so thrilled to say (according to my stats) people in many different countries are reading it!
While we were in Ireland, we were able to attend a service at our daughter and son-in-law’s church and were elated to find it so similar to our own church here at home. The people are like family to our kids, so we immediately felt the same, and worshipping Jesus with them felt as natural as any given Sunday here. That’s one of my favorite things about being a Christian: we’re all in this together!
We had the time of our lives during those nine blissful days. We saw castles, gardens, cliffs, shops, golf courses, and crazy winding, narrow roads that we drove on the opposite side of the road, from the opposite side of the car! We rode streetcars, trains, ferries, and bikes; we dined on delicious foods and drank a few too many pints and Irish whiskey; we were in Ireland after all.
Later, after we’d come back to OklaHOM(E)a, my daughter back in Ireland and I were on the phone, reliving our favorite parts of the trip and hashing out the reality of being 4,300 miles apart again. At one point, we were discussing all the drinking we did, and she asked me how I felt about it. At the time, I was taken off guard by the question, but decided that for me, it was vacation and it felt safe to say that it was all in the spirit of just that, a vacation/special time set apart from the rest of our days. As I reflected on it for several days afterward, I remembered Jesus’s first miracle when He turned water into wine at a wedding where they ran out. Jesus doesn’t make mistakes; He made/drank wine on special occasions. I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m trying, by any means, to justify gluttonous behavior, but I do believe that if it were a sin, Jesus Himself wouldn’t take part in a celebratory drink, so that’s that. I definitely know that satan will use opportunities such as this to send his minions to wreak havoc on us, like guilt and blame, and to steal the joy we were just feeling and replace it with shame, and I fully believe that he will every single time we give him a chance to. Nice try buddy; not today, not our family, not our trip. Thank You, Lord, for discernment!
**Discernment is the ability to perceive, recognize, and judge wisely—especially when distinguishing between what is true and false, right and wrong, or wise and unwise. It involves insight, good judgment, and careful evaluation rather than making decisions based solely on emotion or appearances.
I think as humankind, it’s easy to fall into the spiral of self-loathing if we take our eyes off of The One True Judge and worry about what others must be thinking of us. In turn, I think it’s equally as easy to find ourselves in the judgement seat, critiquing others for what we think they should or shouldn’t be doing. I’ve sat on a jury before, as I’ve shared in a previous post, so I feel somewhat educated when I say that I would never want to be the deciding factor in someone else’s life mistakes/bad choices. The truth of the matter is that we all make them; we’re all just trying to figure out this thing called life. When we judge ourselves and others, it leaves room for doubt in who is really in control, and where there’s doubt, there’s a foothold for the devil to sneak in and do his best to create a rift between us and Jesus. We find ourselves questioning His ways, “God why would You let this happen to me?” Or “Lord, if that’s really You, give me a sign.” No matter what age we’re in, that’s the struggle as old as time, there are numerous examples of this in the Bible. Stories of people just like us, fickle naysayers, whose faith can be as unpredictable as which way the wind blows. In the book of Judges, there’s a story of a man named Gideon, whom God called to deliver Israel from the Midianites. But Gideon felt he was unworthy of the task (I can relate; how about you?), so he asked God for a sign that it was truly Him speaking to him, and what did God do? He gave him a sign!
The Angel of the LORD had appeared to Gideon while he was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites (Judges 6:11).
“Then Gideon replied to him, ‘If I have found favor with you, give me a sign that you are speaking with me.'” — Judges 6:17 (CSB)
Gideon was afraid, he couldn’t understand that the Lord saw something in him and planned to use Gideon as His own vessel, and that he would ultimately save his people. He needed more, not unlike me asking God to play a certain worship song, “If this is really You God?”, and then He plays that song and then I’m like “Okay, if it’s really You , let me get only green lights when I’m driving through town”, and then I get only green lights. Here’s Gideon’s version:
36 Then Gideon said to God, “If You will deliver Israel by my hand, as You said,
37 I will put a fleece of wool here on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece, and all the ground is dry, I will know that You will deliver Israel by my strength, as You said.”
38 And that is what happened. When he got up early the next morning, he squeezed the fleece and wrung dew out of it, filling a bowl with water.
39 Then Gideon said to God, “Don’t be angry with me. Let me speak one more time. Please allow me to make one more test with the fleece. Let it remain dry, and the dew be all over the ground.”
40 That night God did as Gideon requested: only the fleece was dry, and dew was all over the ground.
It’s true, God answers if we truly seek Him! Just last night I had a similar experience. I was going to an event that called for a country-western-inspired outfit (my favorite kind of outfit!), and I really wanted to wear my FABULOUS new boots I’d bought on our anniversary trip to Ft. Worth, Texas, back in the Spring.
Now that you’ve seen these amazing specimens, I’m sure you’ll understand the dilemma I struggled with. You see, I’m a Type 1diabetic, and I’m currently on antibiotics for a sore on the top of my foot that has been there for four whole weeks, and let me tell you, it’s a nasty one. If you know anything at all about diabetes (I didn’t until I was diagnosed with it), then you may know that foot injuries can be super serious for us. As in, losing your foot altogether if it gets infected enough. My sore started as a tiny blister that was caused by, (SIGH) another pair of shoes I’d worn (yes, I have an addiction; it’s shoes), and the buckle rubbed it raw, hence the blister. It festered after I kept on trucking through this country life I lead, and well, it got scary. After three weeks of no relief, I decided to go to the doctor. He prescribed my meds and sent me on my way. I’ve been taking them religiously and had seen some improvement, but I wasn’t sure it was in my best interest to wear the boots last night, so I threw caution to the wind, slapped a Band-Aid on that sucker, threw a sock over it, and pulled those bad boys on while silently praying that my sore wouldn’t worsen. Then, I thought, Lord not only that, maybe You could heal it, while simultaneously thinking, well, probably not while wearing these boots?, Then I carried on with my night. Here’s the good part y’all, when I got home and pulled those boots off, I was prepared for the worst. Slowly, I peeled that Band-aid off and low and behold, it actually DID look healed, well maybe not fully healed, but EXPONENTIALLY better than when I put those boots on. Don’t tell God what He can do, He is capable of ANYTHING, great OR small, if you trust in Him.
“Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in you, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
— Ephesians 3:20–21 (CSB)
I say all of this to say, GOD. That’s where my hope comes from. HE casts out all fear, 365 times it says in the Bible: DO NOT FEAR. When HE conquers even arguably the worst fear, death itself, that my friends is freedom. Freedom to live the life He has so graciously given us, trust in Him, live it!
