Nov 02 2007
Life without hope
“One of the most important gifts we in the health profession can offer our patients is hope, thereby inspiring in the patient a deep conviction that inner strength can make a difference in the struggle against pain and suffering.” - Dr. Paul Brand
My lowest points over the last seven years have come from moments when I had little to no hope. No hope that I’d be healed. No hope that I could live a life of glory or even a life of meaning. I felt worthless. Helpless. Lonely. Isolated. As I sunk deeper into depression, hope faded away from my mind and heart. I became negative, cranky, and angry with what I had become and then took that out on my friends.
Today, I still struggle with pain on a daily basis, but I’m happy and content with my life. How did a change of that magnitude happen? I believe it’s because I stopped asking God why He allowed this to happen. I started to trust Him and believe that He did, in fact, have a perfect plan for my life. I may never understand why I had to go through what I did, but I have hope that something good will come out of this suffering. I have hope that God will use me to help others. Faith and hope are what keep me going everyday.
I love Hebrews 11, which essentially describes the many people of faith in the Bible and how they faced trials and kept believing God’s promises despite the fact that they never saw his promises come to fruition.
Hebrews 11:1 - “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.”
Hebrews 11:13 - “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did ot receive what was promised, but they saw it from a distance and welcomed it.”
Hebrews 11:35b - “They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection.”
I love those verses because they just remind me to keep the faith and believe that the future will be brighter. Whether the future comes tomorrow, a few years from now, or when I’m pain free in heaven.