Hope

I should be cleaning right now but after a week of busy busy holidays and traveling (example: 16 hours in a car with a 5 week old and an 18 month old over a two day stretch takes a toll!) I came home to a messier house (we left it sort of messy and husband who had been home for several days already had started projects, made more dishes and laundry, and had not even noticed the crayons all over the kitchen floor...) but I've not had the energy or the desire to really put any elbow grease into cleaning it. After three days of being home with husband I can say it is cleaner and laundry has been done but it really isn't much better off at all; the messes have just transferred from one room to the next and from tools and crayons in the kitchen to half unpacked Christmas gifts and a million toys in each room (thank you Margo).


Anyway, besides all that, I was talking to a very good friend of mine yesterday about the stresses in our lives and how we're (not) dealing with them. Both of us have felt like we know what we should do but we don't do it and when things get hard we lose our temper much too much. I personally have felt like I read the Bible and see my sin and see the answer and the Grace there but its like I have a disease called stress and a temper and everything I read is diagnosing the problem but I have not found a cure. In short, I haven't been able to apply what I know to be the truth that will "set me free".

My dear friend pointed me to several verses but only two of them caught my eye. One being in Isaiah 40:

Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

And the other was in 1 Peter 3:

For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful.

From these two something clicked in my head and I suddenly realized in all the turmoil of life and emotions I haven't been putting much hope in God lately. I am still not entirely sure what that looks like in my life and whats more, in my head and heart, but at least I now have a starting point and some direction. Put your hope in God- with your marriage, with your daughter, with the future.

I really can't elaborate any further, my heart is too full.

Life is hard right now, but a little candle has been lit in the quiet times I have with God... at least that part of life is no longer a fight against the bleak and darkness... at least now I can pray and stop arguing against myself in my Bible time.

I am thankful for a starting point: hope.