Simply Hope

By Karissa Smith

While I stand here, I’m falling deeper into this moment. I’m suffocating while I stand here and breathe. Whether I lie down and surrender or stand up and fight, the outcome is all the same. The contradictions overwhelm me, and I close my eyes for security, but all I see are the questions I have yet to answer.

I live. I die. Every day I die to myself and I pick up a cross, it symbolizes freedom, and it symbolizes hope. Every day I live in a world that I am not a part of. I am not of this world, I do not fit in here and I never will. Like everyone else I struggle with questions, I struggle with temptations, I struggle with doubts.

The cross I carry invokes persecution from onlookers, and though it symbolizes freedom, sometimes I feel far from free. I struggle with emotions, I fight against the lies that the enemy whispers into my heart. I am broken, we are all broken, but He is putting us back together.

There are times when I lose sight of Him, times where I feel like running away, but in the end I’ll always come back. Because He never runs away, and He never gives me anything I can’t handle. I may feel overwhelmed at times, but He is always right there with me, ready to catch me when I fall, ready to lift me higher than I’ve ever dreamed of going.

He can take me where I’ve never been, and though I may be scared sometimes, I know that this is the only way. He is the Answer that I can never find anywhere else. He is the missing piece that I can’t find inside myself. He will be there forever, when everything else fails, He’s the One waiting there.

No matter what I do, He’s there. It’s love, and it’s unconditional. It’s hard to fathom, hard to believe that He loves me no matter what. I may feel terrible for what I’ve done, I may have nailed him to the cross every day for nine years, but when I came to Him, broken and bleeding, and laid everything I had at the foot of that cross, the nails were removed and He was by my side, telling me everything would be okay.

And right now, it’s not okay. Right now it’s far from okay, but I have that promise to hold onto. The promise is not that life will be easy. The promise is not that my problems are over. The promise is not that I won’t have to work. But the promise is that I will have help when I’ve reached my limit. The promise is that my problems will be light and momentary, and He’ll be there through the storm. The promise is that my work is not in vain, after this world, this world where I don’t belong, there is something better.
I have a promise, I have hope.

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*scratch here to smell sunflowers*