Hope Doesn't Just Happen: My Personal Journey of Reclaiming Hope In The Lord

Yesterday, I decided to stop at a coffee shop after the gym for a little Bible time and their seasonal Apple Cider. It was then that I discovered a journal I didn't even realize was in my car. There was only one entry dated just over three months ago and then it all came back to me. I remembered sitting at Starbucks writing down the key topics I was struggling with. Authority. Doubt. Trust. Submission. Hope.

I was asking myself questions like:

• Do I trust God to have authority over my life?

• Do I trust His plans for me? Are they really good?

• How can I submit to a husband if I can't even submit to God?

• How do I have hope when I'm wrestling with so much doubt?

I'd ended my entry with a prayer that God would help me trust Him, that He would teach me how to submit and feel safe. And so, instead of writing something new in my journal, I took the time yesterday to reflect on how I feel about those topics now. To my surprise, my latest reflection went something like this.

• I do trust God's authority over my life. His plans for me are good.

• I know that God is protecting me and He loves me.

• I know it's safe for me to submit to Him.

• I know that waiting on the Lord is not in vain. I trust that at the right time He will bring the right person. And in the meantime, He is doing a good work in me.

• I no longer resent the waiting even when impatience and loneliness gets to me.

• God is the source of my hope. Without Him, there would be nothing to hope in or for.

As I wrote these words in my journal, I felt a sense of calm, almost like an exhale because I knew they were true. I wasn't just saying pretty words to make myself sound healed. I'd been living out those pretty words for weeks if not months.

Just the day before, someone struck up a conversation with me at the gym. While this person meant well, certain things she said stood to be triggers for me--or fiery darts as our pastor would say. It began with, "You're 31 with no kids? I didn't even know that was an option."

She explained that we were the same age and when she was younger, she thought the only option was to rush. She'd never been single in her life and had her first baby at 20. She said she was envious of my childfree life--in a way that mom's can understand. She's not saying I wish I didn't have kids. She's saying, I wish I could go home to a clean, empty house where no one needs me for a day.

I told her, "We all want what we don't have." And that's when I opened up about wanting to be married and have kids, and I hoped I met someone before my biological clock stopped ticking.

She said: "You're so beautiful, I doubt you have any issues getting approached. When was the last time you went on a date?"

As I answered, "Nope, I don't really get approached. My last relationship ended about six years ago and I haven't dated since," she was shocked.

Her response: "Well, that's got to be hard. I mean we were made for connection. You're a woman. You have needs."

And I was like, "Yep. But I trust at the right time, the Lord will bring the right person."

It was nice for her to acknowledge that being single for a prolonged period of time is hard and physical needs don't just magically appear after you say, "I do." I am a 30+ woman. I know how my body works. What it needs. And yes, it's hard to go without. It's also hard to feel like every menstrual cycle and every birthday means one less chance of having a baby. But those are the fiery darts, the subtle attacks from the devil meant to set our hearts ablaze so that we collapse to doubt.

Doubt is the opposite of hope. Hope is a spirit of expectancy and a state of peace, because we know who our hope rests in.

I was able to shut down this triggering conversation with the statement "I trust..." But my ability to trust in the Lord and place my hope in the Lord did not just happen. And my devotional today reminded me of that.

"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope." Psalm 130:5

God's Word is the source of our hope. And so, I wrote in my journal a three-pronged approach to hope.

Step 1: Knowledge and understanding of God

Step 2: Trust in God

Step 3: Hope in God

Our ability to hope in God is directly connected to our ability to trust Him. And our ability to trust God is directly connected to our knowledge and understanding of Him and His heart. We cannot trust someone we don't know nor can we place our hope in them. The more we understand who God is and how He loves us, the more we understand His word as truth, the more we trust Him and His goodness, the easier it is to place our hope in Him.

Believing in God's goodness and trusting His plans for me are good took me a very long time. It's something that God has been trying to reveal to me and heal in me for years, and something I feel I've finally accepted.

God's plans are good. Truly accepting that allows me--on the hard days--to look at my life and the woman that God has restored and see His goodness, even when I'm still waiting for certain good things.

And, for the record, I do not believe I'm waiting for nothing. For many years, I did. I questioned if God had written marriage as part of my story. I no longer question it. I know God's heart well enough to know He desires marriage for me. I see the work He's doing in me to prepare me to be not only His daughter but someone's wife. And He's given me certain confirmations, certain glimmers of hope that remind me it will happen one day. Remain faithful.

And while motherhood may still feel like a question mark simply because of my age, I believe wholeheartedly that if it is God's will for me to be a mother, it will happen regardless of my age. He is the author of time and the preserver of my body. He has the authority and in the meantime, I will steward my body well in preparation for both marriage and motherhood.

With all of this said, I see the value in the past six years of singleness. I see the value of getting comfortable living alone, of reclaiming my health, of having the freedom to become the woman and woman of God He has called me to be. I see the value of getting to travel, of getting to make friends that aren't filtered through someone else. I see the value in being able to devote as much time as I want to to my church and my other passions. I see the value of the wilderness, of the waiting, of singleness. I see the value of my season. And what I've realized is... There will always be another season.

Getting married is a change in season, but it is not the last season. For many years, I held the belief that it was. The day you get married is the day everything changes and your life becomes solely about your husband and your children. But one of the things God has revealed to me through this season of waiting is that your life, my life, is bigger than marriage. He has purposes beyond that for me, and honestly, for each of us. And even after you get married, you may face another season of being alone. I see that in my grandma, in my mom, in my aunt.

A marriage certificate is not a guarentee to have companionship for the rest of your life. And so, I value the time I have now to make friends, to build community, to find myself and where I belong, because even after I get married, there will be a use for this community and sense of belonging. And there may be a time when I have to rely on them again just as I will continue to have to rely on God throughout every season.

I think that's the biggest lesson God has been teaching me is how to rely on Him, because once you feel the peace of submitting to Him, it's not something you ever want to give up. It does make the waiting easier, and it also reveals to me how to better steward every relationship that comes my way. But that is a different post.

In closing, don't let discouragement or the words of others create a doubt in you that God never authored. We all have trigger points. We all have those places in us that ache and when someone presses just right, we hurt even when hurting us is the last thing they wanted to do. Do not let the doubt and discouragement fester. Shut it down with words of hope, words of truth, words from God. Because His word is true. His word is the anchor of our hope. His word is our foundation and the source of our peace.

If you're waiting for something specific, find peace in knowing the journey is just as important as the destination. There is a time and place for everything under the sun and the season will change. The Lord will give you the desires of your heart if you continue to trust and seek Him. This word is true not because God is withholding from you, not because you have to prove your faithfulness to God before being blessed, but because God knows that continuing to seek Him is the only way to continue to trust Him and to maintain hopefulness in a world that seeks to make us hopeless.