Traveling true through hell to the New You

A sample of the worst days of my life
that helped make my life what it is today.

REMINISCING over 14-year-old journal entries proves a thing true: a hell-of-months traversed through consistently, blesses, for such memories never fade.

Vanquished was joy, bereft was peace, forlorn was hope, the grief so lamentably memorable, that those journal entries, read a third-of-a-lifetime further on, reveal:

©     Not one day in that season of comprehensive loss was devoid of both hope and hopelessness; hope a day would come where joy, peace and hope would return; yet, hopelessness was the incontrovertible sense that that day was a long way away. Both these feelings never left me. Together they tormented me. But they held me together.

©     I see now the eternal provision then that’s now become eternal possession. The coalescence of hope and hopelessness was a God-intended corner that grief backed me into, and it proved safe and effective, no matter how excruciating the experience was. It locked me in and it assured me of my ultimate restoration.

©     The promise and reality of God’s Presence is something that makes such a season endurable. But that’s not all. What continues to unfold is incredible. Restoration of life, post-grief, means that God’s Presence is but the embodiment of the eternal possession. And what more with it?

©     Thankfulness for God’s faithfulness swells when He commends us for our obedience. Done once, we’re compelled to do it again and again and again, for the power of the Kingdom is ours, something we would never deny again. A new me emerged. I am the same person but completely different.

Grief is a manifestation of hell in this life. Never go through such a journey without clinging to God. Indeed, only in this worldly life is it possible to endure hell with God’s company as comfort. Travel through it true. No matter how senseless it might seem.

Thank God for the hope in you that you cannot explain, despite the wretched pain, but is there and real and true. God has taught us something supremely and eternally valuable.

God adds hope for the journey that seems hopeless. He gives peace we never understand. And somehow, we make it through hell knowing we must keep on going.

God proves Himself real through a hope we can’t deny, and we learn to endure numbness and anguish. And that becomes our possession of faith.