Dear friend,
It was the second week of our much longed for sabbatical, and we were dragging our sandy children and salty towels back to the caravan after a lovely long day at the beach. We’d had sunshine and a whole cove to ourselves because we went down the cliff instead of by the car park. Our thoughts returned to the caravan. Hopefully the awning was still going to be up. Most of the last few days had featured a large amount of awning problem solving - putting it up, putting it down, fixing a puncture...putting it up, the fixed bit puncturing, putting it down...putting it up, the fixed bit puncturing again, putting it down, fixing it...waiting 12 hours (like we should have last time)...putting it up... but now hopefully... yes! It was still standing! Hooray! Sam did a victory dance and I sighed. The tent stress was over, we had finally arrived. It was only as we neared the tent that we realised the other two air beams had punctured. Yeah the ones that we hadn’t fixed yet.
Mechanics
I find it very difficult to get over things. I know in that story I’m talking about very inconsequential events, but they made me aware of a bigger pattern. When I am expecting good things and I get bad things, I find it incredibly hard to move on. It completely floors me. Particularly when the good things were my plan for happiness. I hate feeling disappointed! I avoid it like the plague.
Hope erosion
Was I asking too much for a bit of peace? Was nothing ever going to be easy ever again? Here I was with my very little dream ruined. And why was this so difficult? Well, because that was the only dream I let myself have. To have a nice day. Years of big disappointments, illness and discouragement have eroded my hope. Unprocessed pain has left me feeling that I just can’t take any more things not working out like I’d planned. And now that I’ve started facing and expressing some of those things, I’ve noticed that my hope has all but dried up. Like a neglected spring. Abandoned and ignored somewhere up in the mountains. My response to disappointment was to stop hoping in the big things: God and people and everything being ok in the end and to start aiming small. Not gratefully receiving good things; that’s wonderful. But aiming for small things. Shrinking my dreams to the size of a peanut and it will be ok... All I want is a quiet cup of tea! All I want is a happy day in the sunshine. All I want is a tiny perfect moment. Instead of an abundant spring, I’ll make do with a little trickle of water. But instead of protecting me from disappointment, I ended up with a constant flow of little disappointments because my hope was in the wrong things. Little streams are easily dried up.
The problem with the don’t hope-in-God-so-he-can’t-disappoint-you plan, is that the opposite of hope is not really disappointment. It’s despair.
I took out the hope that because I am loved by God there is a wonderful and beautiful plan for my life, special to me, fulfilling for me; the hope that someone is working behind the scenes to make all these dark things beautiful again; the hope that there is a solution to all the mystery just beyond the horizon... And it didn’t leave me feeling not disappointed. It didn't protect me. I felt like a dried up river bed. Depressed.
So the awning went down again. We tucked it up in our neighbours much larger and less punctured awning for the night. I retreated into the caravan and listened to Sam chatting away to the guy who was babysitting our awning. He was nice. He drives a lorry and has a caravan the size of a jumbo jet. Soon they were having a beer under the stars and sharing their stories. I felt God’s whisper on my heart. “Maybe the kindness of strangers is more real than the caravan mechanics...?”
Our children get over things so quickly. They are so unfailingly hopeful. It’s annoying. When we told them the awning was broken they were upset about not having somewhere to play Lego for about three seconds and then went off to find blackberries. They know that it doesn’t matter, because they are better at fairy stories than me. They still believe in the happy ending. They still remember what’s really real. They think blackberries are more important right now and everything will work out. They are idiots. And so much better for it.
I couldn’t trust the bible if it didn’t include stories of real danger and difficulty. Because I see it in front of me, now more than ever, and I need to know that God knows about this stuff. I need a spring that will replenish the little streams when they get dry.
So how can I possibly start having big hope again, in the face of so much crazy.
There are two things in this verse that God has used to start bringing that spring back to life.
Two reasons for hope.
I have redeemed you.
I will be with you.
I have redeemed you.
What’s really real: the deeper magic
In our day and age you’re an idiot if you believe in a happy ending. There aren’t any. Things end in death. Everything else is fantasy or a lie we tell kids. But we long for it don’t we? Its why so many of us go so big on Christmas. I won’t even watch films that don’t have happy endings. I have to feel things will work out in the end. With the tectonic shifts in nature, in politics and in the health crisis we’re facing, there is no easy happy ending visible. It’s not going to come from the world just working out ‘like it always does...’
But Jesus is ALL about the happy ending. He loves it! That’s what redeem means. To make the bad bit good. To use the bad guys own weapon to bring them down. In the Narnia books, I love the bit where the white witch thinks she’s got Aslan nailed but she doesn’t know about the ‘deeper magic’. The secret is, she can’t keep him dead! She lays him out on the stone table, she humiliates and ruins him. She delights in destroying him. But Aslan can’t stay dead. This is the awesome thing about Jesus...he just can’t help himself. He always writes a happy ending. He always redeems. We can believe in fairy tales because they’re true. Jesus doesn’t ask me to go on holiday so that I can pretend the world is lovely, everything’s perfect and I don’t need to let this horrible stuff bother me. He says, “this stuff is real, and it’s horrible. But there is also deeper magic. And death will not have the final word.” If it’s not a happy ending, we haven’t got to the end.
I will be with you.
What’s really real: the bigger story
At the beginning of lockdown, once the initial tremors of fear had subsided, there was a moment of calm wasn’t there - like the eye of the storm. People were talking about what was important and singing out of windows on youtube and putting rainbows in their windows: another glimpse of what‘s really real. We were all sort of tapped in to the bigger picture and feeling part of something beautiful, like holding lanterns together in a dark night.
I know somewhere inside I was called to something beautiful. I have dreams inside that long to be heard and songs that ache to be sung. I feel called to a better story than the one I can see in the mechanics of my life. To be part of something wonderful.
I think this is the call to be part of Jesus’ story - more than that, to be part of Him. The purpose for my life first and foremost is to listen to that voice deep in my belly that says, “you were made for more, you were made for me.”
When my children do a dance show in the living room and make me sit and watch; when they shout, “Hey Mummy watch this!” before launching themselves in a ninja pose onto the bed, they are responding to that ache in their gut - to be seen, to be loved, to be part of something incredible! They know that sharing the moment elevates it.
I want to be more like that. I want to reach out to Jesus and know that my hope is not rooted in a moment that can be wiped out by a bad day. So much of our hope starts with, “as long as...” at the moment. “I’ll be ok as long as I don’t get sick; as long as we can get through the next six months; as long as my children are safe...” These hopes feel shakey right now. I need something deeper. I need to have hope that allows for darkness. When I share my life with Jesus, it is transformed. Because he is with me, I can be part of something beautiful. No matter what. And this lifts my head up and helps me see where my hope comes from. This is the bigger story. Connection and closeness, no matter how bad it gets.
So I have begun to see Jesus fill up my hope again. As always with him, it seems there is so much healing just in noticing the problem. I am trying not to avoid disappointment any more, not to keep my hopes really small, because Jesus can redeem disappointment. Disappointment is not the problem. Despair is. Giving up is. Not letting Jesus come through for us is.
Disappointment is horrible and painful and needs feeling and processing. We need to be allowed to be disappointed and to be gutted. But also to be held. And from there to dig in until we can find the deeper magic, the magic of being loved and known no matter what, and remember that a happy ending is on the way. It’s the deeper magic that turns the bad stuff inside out. And the happy ending that puts everything back to the way it should be. In the end.
I don’t want to be someone whose life is marked by pockets of despair. I want to be an idiot! Expecting a moment of closeness even in the darkest times. Hoping always for a happy ending, because I know the one who’s writing the story - and he just can’t help himself.
He just can’t help himself.
“The redeemed will walk there, and those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Forever with singing;
Everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them.
And sorrow and sighing will flew away.”
Isaiah 35:10
Praying hope over everyone who reads this, that you might find light in a dark night.
Much love,
Katy x
