Hope

I have often struggled with the past wondering if my future will be different than the things I witnessed growing up. Much like those who encounter the aftermath of war in their own country and are now in a new country rebuilding their life or a soldier back from war struggling to recover from what he saw through having to tolerate his surroundings and all that he experience is much of how I feel at times because of the devastation of my parents marriage relationship and watching them grow far a part from my childhood into my college years.

At times it feels easier to think that my friends who grew up in what seemed like non-dysfunctional spiritually happy homes could be blessed with good. But when it came to believing this for my own life, due to the devastation that lasted for such a long time and the wreckage and ruins left to recover now, has made it hard to believe and to actually hope that life could be different and will be different, than what I experienced then. This aftermath effect is called post-traumatic stress disorder.

I think of people who survived the the Holocaust, African-Americans in the U.S. who remembered the fight for their own democracy and the similar battle and trauma they experienced before true freedom was theirs. I think of small children as young as three years old who sometimes witness the separation of their parents and the trauma this causes in their life and the seed of insecurities it plants...fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of you name it.

Over time when something traumatic happens over and over and over, over a long period of time the enemy uses it to plant a lie that life is pretty much hopeless. The reality is as a child I was powerless, but because of what Christ has done, there is hope. The way God is using it for my good is that he is causing me to see that hope isn't found in human relationships, especially not in family as much as I look up to them and dearly love them.

How easy it is to idolize the very thing I love and want most, a family that genuinely loves each other. Yet I am reminded the only person worth my true affection and complete dependency is Christ, who is my only hope.