It's been a while. Just wrote this one tonight and I learned through writing. I hope and pray that everyone who reads this gains insight and understanding as I did. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for...Hebrews 11:1a An ironic anniversary. December 8th is my wedding anniversary and the anniversary of my husband's funeral. It's been 23 and 1. I get to celebrate, reminisce, mourn and celebrate, reminisce and morn. Twice on the same day. Merry Christmas and Happy motherfucking New Year. Oops. My bad. I haven't yet overcome my language barriers as yet. I forgot to practice. Again. It was the only thing he ever asked of me--not to curse--and I couldn't even do that! SHAME ON ME! Then I left him in the midst of his kidney failure. O...M...M...F...G You insensitive, selfish biatch! How could you?!! Long story. No time for that. This is about hope...for Me. It's not a term I'm familiar with. I never had that. Hope requires a future. I never had that. What is the substance of hope? As I sit and contemplate the irony of my upcoming dual anniversary, I wonder what it was I hoped for the first time. And like most of us, including him, I wanted "Happily ever after." I wanted a fairytale. I just wish someone, anyone, would have told me that life isn't a fairytale. I wish I could have known that the baggage I carried was to be the destruction of my dream. That my dream had nothing to do with reality. What, then, is the substance of hope? The rest of Hebrews 11:1 says "the evidence of things not seen." What am I missing? What is it I don't see? Me. The first title I came up with for my story was "The Girl Without A Face." I can remember all that happened to me and around me. I can remember one of my first dreams. I was about 3 or 4 years old (and at that age it was more like a nightmare). But I remember. In all my memories and all of my dreams, I cannot see my own face. I can see a person being beaten and ridiculed, broken and scarred. I know she's a girl, but for the life of me, In can't see her face. I remember a book I read as a teenager. It was the diary of a slave girl. She learned how to read and became a conductor on the underground railroad. She learned that there were people she could not free. One man asked her, point blank, "What is freedom?" He explained that he didn't know what that was and that he wanted no part of it. But in her heart she knew what it was even though she had never experienced it. At the end of her book she exclaimed "the picture of freedom is me," while seeing her reflection in a pool of water. That was the most profound thing I had ever read or heard. She could look at herself and see freedom. I wondered then, as I do now, What does that feel like? I've been bound by things beyond and within my control for so long. How do I begin to look like freedom? I don't have the answer to that question. What I do have is faith. God reveals those things needed to move us forward in our journey. This is a revelation. I have faith because it is the gift of God Himself. Hope is... (God stopped me there). Hope is. God is. He didn't say I was. He didn't say I will. God says "I AM" Hope. Faith. Wisdom. Love. Righteousness. The Way. The Truth. The Life. God is Hope. Please feel free to share your thoughts. Triumphs, setbacks and opinions welcome!
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