Embrace HOPE

You truly know your strength when life puts you on edge. People often tell me I’m strong. The honest truth is that I don’t think I’m strong, but I do believe that something divine and supernatural is at work within us when we are thrown in the pit of downright human suffering. So no, I’m not strong, but the God I have firm faith in is strong!

There is no clear answer to why human beings suffer in life. Why death and decay exist. Why sickness prevails. I do not know! But I do know we know that throughout history, miracles happen everyday, people heal from chronic physical and mental illnesses and have their lives turned around when science and people told them otherwise.

Often when tragedy and illness strikes as a community and church we are quick to judge that what a person must be going through is because of a sin or because of a way of faithless life.

As per my understanding, people suffering and sickness are parts of the fall of mankind.

John 9:2-3 says: “His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

I know firsthand the hurt I had to carry when people were quick to say things to analyse the why’s of my cancer diagnosis. People within and outside your family and community will have opinions, but none of that matters if you’re determined to listen to the voice that matters the most – God’s.

Throughout biblical history we have stories of great leaders, ordinary men and women made extraordinary because of their resilient faith in the face of adversity. In my own deep painful moments of physical illness I have tried to listen to God’s voice. When everything else fades, when you have nothing ‘good’ to feel about yourself, with only pangs of pain inflicted upon your physical body I ask myself – ‘Who I am‘? I am made of hopes and dreams. I am a daughter of the Prince of peace.

 

In this moment I feel ‘hope,’ like a seed nut that holds its ground to become an oak tree.

I hold on to that seed like ‘hope.’ Though tiny, insignificant and the smallest of all, in this moment of here and now, I know my hope will find its roots and strengthen in this hardened soil of time and pain, growing one day into a tree of life full of dreams.

This isn’t just a whimsical positive affirmation idea I’m trying to get across, but through my lived experience I am here to affirm that when life strips you of everything material – your finances, assets, and your physical health, costing you so much more than you ever imagined, you are only left with your bare self. “The real you’ is what you’re made of! If you dare to still hold on to ‘hope’ in that moment of all loss and suffering, you can overcome the pangs of the fragile mind that says ‘You failed’! 

When faced with the uncertainty of life and death one cannot try midway to choose an optimistic way of life and sell a life of lies to people saying ‘look I’m so strong!’ You simply cannot fake optimism. You cannot make your way through life without a strong foundation of faith, and that strength becomes your way of life.

I love how meaningfully Douglas J. Moo writes in The Letter of James (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, 54–55.): The “testing of faith” here, then, is not intended to determine whether a person has faith or not; it is intended to purify faith that already exists.”

I understand that to many people, my life hasn’t turned out to be exactly like a life of dreams, with me on a journey to cancel cancer thrice in a row. But I am taking each time cancer set me back to lean into every promise and purpose God had ordained in my life relentlessly in pursuit of seeking the gift of life, dreaming on and living on!

Yesterday, through a divine change of events I couldn’t get on with the third cycle of chemotherapy due to a low blood platelets count and an infection in the arm where a port has been surgically put for intravenous chemotherapy. We had made plans to go home and continue the rest of the treatment home, but we couldn’t! The more life is throwing curve balls at my end, I realise that often failed plans bring us to a place which turns out to be better for us in the long run, even if in that moment it doesn’t seem like the ‘best’ plan. The 5 days off from chemotherapy did me more good than bad as my body got a much needed break from the side effects. My appetite got better and I could enjoy a good meal and good sleep.

Through this wilderness, I’m reminded that the strength of my faith is how HOPEFUL I am now, secured in the firm belief that this chapter of my life isn’t my portion, that this isn’t my destiny, that this is a roadblock and a mountain I’m determined to move.

Choose Hope today! Be so HOPEFUL that it becomes a way of life not a wishful thinking!