Against All Human Hope: Dealing With Disappointment

When I got home from Christmas break, I celebrated one week without falling.

A few days later, a brutal combination of COVID and a symptom flare forced me to the ground quite literally. The day after I tested positive, I fell seven times. Seven. Once for each day that I had celebrated my new record.

That week included an ambulance ride, a hospital visit, hours of pain, losing the ability to walk, speak, move, and the foreboding thought over all of it that the hardest and most painful symptoms I had wouldn’t leave when COVID was done with me.

Even now as I write these words, COVID is gone, but my legs lie useless on the bed before me.

Two days ago, at Physical Therapy, I was told that my body is not responding to the sessions as it should. We can keep going, I was told, but at this point, it’s not looking hopeful.

As hard as Physical Therapy is, that was the only time I ever cried during a session.

Not looking hopeful—the future not looking hopeful—was the last thing I wanted to hear when the present felt so unbearable. As I limped home with my cane I prayed: Lord, am I always going to be this way? 

When Hope Doesn’t Make Sense

Of course, the answer to my question is no. I will not always be this way. There will come a day when my broken body will be resurrected and glorified, when my brain will respond and send signals the way it should, when my tongue will never stutter again, my legs never buckle, my hands never curl and paralyze.

For the Christian, that thought is hopeful. It is glorious.

But in our humanness, our finiteness, where our present suffering seems to swallow us whole, we want it now. The healing now, the glory now, the safety, and beauty, and painlessness now. And if not now, then we want to know when it is coming. That it will be in this lifetime. That we won’t have to live like this for years to come. That we can get better in this life because Heaven feels so far away.

Hope, from the human perspective, is as elusive as the weather. We say: “I hope it doesn’t rain.” “I hope I don’t fail my final.” “I hope I get married one day.” We use hope to express our strong wishes and desires—sometimes deeply felt and rooted desires—but without the certainty that these things will happen.

Human doors shut again and again: Your body stops responding to treatment. Your frail marriage cracks beneath the weight of another fight. You fail another class at school. You miss the promotion you desperately needed. You lose the relationship you thought would lead to marriage. You have another miscarriage. The cancer is back.

Souls weep. Grief reawakens. Threads snap. Diagnoses crush. Money crumbles. Strongholds fall.

And human hope doesn’t seem to make sense.

Christian Hope in the Future

Christian hope is different. The Christian hope is not only strong desire, but confidence that that desire will one day be fulfilled. In this way, hope is strongly linked to faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

In Christ, we have the assurance of things hoped for. It is not elusive. It has already been promised us, purchased for us, given to us.

He will catch every tear of the weeping soul. He will solace every grief, weave into his tapestry of glory every broken thread, reverse every diagnosis, provide the fullness of his own inheritance; he is, himself, the stronghold.

The fulfillment of this promise is not yet. But the God of this promise is already.

Already here, in the grief, in the pain, in the human hopelessness. And he, who is full of love and jealousy, will make it very hard for you to carry your grief without him. It will crush you unless you give it to him again and again. That is love. That is how it is meant to be.

How to Cling to Hope

Thanksgiving

During one particularly rough stretch of pain, I started crying out to the Lord from the depths of deep and pervading sorrow. As I was crying and praying, I tried thanking God for some of the good things that had happened to me that day. Thank you that I was able to sleep for a while. Thank you that I could eat something earlier. Thank you for the sky out that window. 

And then, from deep inside, a tiny thought whispered: Thank him for the pain.

Some prayers make us sing; some prayers make us weep. There have been very few prayers that made me retch, but that was one of them. True, physical retching—not from the pain, or nausea, but from the sheer desperation of the internal battle that pitted my sinfulness and confusion against my conviction and praise.

Praise can indeed be a sacrifice. Praise is hard.

But praise also takes you outside of yourself. It sets your mind on what is good. There are always threads of God’s grace, always pools of goodness from which to drink, always something true and pure on which to fasten your mind.

That isn’t silly, superficial, or negligible.

It is survival.

Some things feel very small to thank God for: Sunshine. Hot showers. Coffee. Others are tinged with grief and gratitude: God my legs don’t work right now—thank you that they worked yesterday. That was such a gift. Thank you.

Still others feel huge and monumental: Lord, I see the way you answered this prayer. Lord, I don’t feel alone right now, I feel aware that you’re with me. Lord, you actually love me, and have saved me, and know all my pain.

Each thing leaves me hungrily searching for the next. That is how God works. He doesn’t need your prayers. You need your prayers. Your thanksgivings do not change him. They change you.

Look for Opportunities of Joy and Loving Others

Pain brings a strong temptation toward self-pity and introspection. It is hard to be interested in others. Hard to love. Hard to smile.

Every morning, you wake up with a full day ahead of you, perhaps a day that is long, and hard, and much like the day before. Maybe the first thing you’re aware of when you open your eyes is pain or depression or anxiety. Maybe the thought of facing another day makes you wish life would move on without you.

I once read a line from Joni Erickson Tada where she said that every morning, she prays that God would give her his smile because in her pain and grief she does not have one on her own.

I have found that many mornings, I need to pray that prayer. I need to pray it when I wake up and don’t know if my legs will hold me. I need it when I’m limping to school, when I greet people, when I rejoin my class after seizing on the bathroom floor. I need it when the day seems to stretch on and on, when there are extra assignments, and little sleep, and human annoyances.

And I need it on the days I can’t do anything at all, except lie on my bed in pain and wait the long hours out alone.

Often it’s just a few words: Lord, give me your smile today. Lord, I need you right now. Lord, hold me fast. 

And when that is done, pray: Lord, open my eyes to the ways you are good to me today. Open my eyes to something that will bring me joy. Lord, open my eyes to the ways that I can bless others. 

Sometimes, that’s lying flat on your back and praying and thanking God for them. Other times, that’s smiling, asking how their day was, and genuinely listening. Sometimes, it’s a bigger opportunity.

It’s all fighting. It’s all hope.

Remind Yourself of the Truth

Your mind may often lie to you. It can make you feel unloved, unworthy, rejected. It can bring the weight of past sins or future anxieties as a crushing burden. It can make you feel alone. It can make you feel as if life isn’t the gift God says it is.

Sheer exhaustion plays tricks with your mind—someone once told me not to believe anything my head says at night and I’ve found that to be true. Pain, discouragement, and isolation can all add to the physical and mental instability, lending strength to the lies.

Before I go into a bad seizure, my cognitive abilities are compromised. I lose touch with where I am and what is real, voices come from far away, darkness clouds my vision. I cannot move, speak, or see. Physical feelings of fear rise up in my body as it fights to remain on the surface of consciousness, fights for control, fights against the pain.

But surrender is inevitable, and often, as I sink into the darkness those lies are in my ears. Nightmarish dreams and hallucinations play across my mind and body, as my brain tries to make sense of the pain without the rubric of conscious thought and reality.

I have little to no control of the fear I experience or the images I see once I am under. They are sheer, physical, involuntary responses to pain and cognitive compromise.

But going under. That is a different story. Going under—as I feel mental capacity fading, my body slipping out of my control, the convulsions and confusion setting their net around me—going under I can plead in my mind: God go with me in there. Go with me into the darkness. And hold me fast. 

He already was holding me fast. But the prayer tells me the truth that he already was. When the dark thoughts come, instead of surrendering to the spiral or trying to think of nothing, I can say to them—That is not true—and then tell myself what is.

Maybe you don’t have seizures, but you too can feel when you are entering into a darkness you can’t control, into a spiral of grief, into a hard anniversary, a dangerous surgery, a particularly difficult day. And you may cry to God to enter into that darkness and pain with you.

The going under may be terrifying, but it may also sink you down until you feel the Rock of Ages.

You are not sinning when dark thoughts assault you. You are not sinning by grieving, by sobbing, by wanting things to be different.

It is what you do with those thoughts, those desires, that grief, that determines whether it is sin or it is glory.

Looking Forward to the Promise

John Piper said that hope is like being on a skiff in a storm, as the water is ripping through the channel out to open sea. You are standing on this tiny skiff, right in the mouth of the channel. The water is tearing beneath you, the waves are rolling, and the wind is driving the rain into your face. The clouds show no sign of breaking. You are wet, exhausted, and sick.

But you have thrown an anchor over the side of the boat. It is a trusted anchor. It is attached as firmly to the rocks as it is to your skiff. It will not move. It will not let you go. And you are trusting it.

You are no less sick, no less wet, exhausted, or miserable in the boat. But you know the anchor will hold in the storm. You know it will hold you fast.

We often talk about how those before the time of Jesus “died looking forward to the promises”. That is true. But what is also true is that we still die looking forward to the promises. Christ died and rose again, not as the ultimate fulfillment of the promises but as the ultimate purchase of the ultimate fulfillment of the promises.

When he died he said: It is finished. 

And when he rose, God said: It is finished indeed.

We not only will die looking forward to the promises, but we die every day looking forward to the promises. For us, there is not only hope, there is confidence. For if in Christ we die, in Christ we will rise again.

Heaven is so precious, that Heaven can wait.

The best is always yet to come, even in glory.