From Solitude To Hope

Last week some friends drove me to Lake Michigan so I could sit and enjoy watching the water. It was a wonderful day of food, fellowship and laughter. The weather was perfect, it was fairly warm and sunny but there was a pretty good wind so it just made for a great day. The wind had created some pretty strong tides and there was warnings against swimming so the beach was pretty much all ours.

Shortly before we left I took some time to just watch the water. After a few minutes I noticed out of the corner of my eye one lone figure sitting near the water at a table that the park has and the sight drew my attention. This solo lady sat there watching the waves crash in much as I have done so many times in my life. I wondered what brought her on this day. I felt the Holy Spirit stirring my heart and I began to see how sometimes we can sit before the waves of a circumstance in our life  and allow them to make us feel so small and insignificant. It can sometimes make us feel hopeless and alone.

Almost three years ago I began a series of these moments as I began battling cancer. Don’t get me wrong I have amazing family, church family and friends who flood me with support and encouragement and I am so thankful. I don’t mean to diminish my amazing support network but there are moments in this journey that I have to face alone.

For example, I remember when I had to have not one but two biopsies, the second a painful lung biopsy where you are literally impaled through your back by a scope like needle that punctures and deflates your lung all the while laying awake face down. Another is getting one of many PET scans where you have to get an IV of radioactive material and then wait in a dark room by yourself for an hour before being strapped to a table that enters a tube like machine for an hour. I am not sharing these for sympathy but rather to point out that we all have moments where we are alone, whether it’s a health battle, a loss of a loved one and the subsequent grief, and so many other hard life moments.

In that moment of watching this woman sitting before a roaring shoreline it also occurred to me that while we all have moments or circumstances that we face when we will have to stand alone it also occurred to me in that moment that we can allow ourselves to be small and overwhelmed by what lies before us or we can take our eyes off of ourselves and put them on a God who is so much bigger than our hardships.

It was then that I realized that this solitary woman, and all of us, had/have a choice to let the circumstances put our eyes on ourselves or to look out at the roaring shore and realize that the power and intensity we see is not even a fraction of the power God has to move us beyond those circumstances. They are nothing to Him for He is so much greater. If we lift our eyes to him we can stand in front of the waves of our life and realize that the God who makes the wind and the waves is showing us how much He loves us and how He is more than capable to meet us in these, what feel like,  solitary moments. He show us in so many ways that we are not small, insignificant or ever out of His sight. He is always near and He knows our every need. He sees our heart even when we feel lost in the waves.

As we wrapped up our day I thanked God for showing me how a simple change of perspective can move us from solitude to hope.