Burnt Cookies and Hope Part 1

I’ll save you the pity party of personal details and jump right into it. The past week and a half or so has been rough. Lots of emotional turmoil. My heart was heavy and burdened. Though I didn't know it at the time, you could sum up the state of my heart in one word: Disappointed. I had become very negative, and lost heart.  

And as you know, when it rains, it surely pours.

So then we burnt the cookies. Samantha was visiting for the game and had been excited to make some homemade desserts. Of the desserts she planned on making, were your basic oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  You know the rest of the story. 20 some minutes later we pulled out a batch of charred hockey pucks that were definitely not cookies. Samantha was flustered. I tried to console her and she dejectedly replied something to the effect of, “It’s fine. It’s always something and it gets old.” She promptly retreated to the deck with that comment and I promptly cried. This was about much more than the burnt cookies of the morning. This was about my un-grieved pain and frustration I have held inside the past 4 and a half years.  So I finally gave in to God and cried. And God was there. I dare say, God even orchestrated the week’s events to heal a broken part of me. A part of me that I had long been withholding from him.

And this Monday, God showed his face. God showed me exactly what it was he wanted to heal inside me so badly.

I woke up early and trained a client at 6 am. We were done by 7, and as I walked out of FKS I was overwhelmed with a sunrise that was breathtaking. Orange, yellows, reds, and purples like an artist just went to town on his canvas. Clouds scattered with the precision of a painter with undying passion for his work. My heart was immediately encouraged and uplifted in 10 seconds of beauty. It was a painting of hope, reminding me that one day, the Life I so desperately long for will indeed come.

I hopped into my car and turned on the local country station to find myself listening to Dierks Bentleys new single ‘I Hold On’. It is a song about a lot of different things, but it spoke to me this particular morning about hope. And I knew what God was after in my heart. He was after my hope.

“…set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” - 1 Peter 1:13

Aka set your hope fully on the coming Kingdom of Heaven.

Samantha sent me an email earlier last week in the midst of my disappointments. She wrote “I can’t wait until one day God heals your body and I get to see you running free in heaven.” At the time I was ecstatic. My heart was encouraged. But that’s where it ended. My perspective was not adjusted at all because my hope was still in this life, here and now.

The past weeks struggle and exhaustion stemmed from one simple but profound broken part of my heart. I do not hope in Heaven. Instead, I live as though this temporary and often times disappointing life is my only hope.  Allow me to lean on the wisdom of John Eldredge and share an excerpt from The Sacred Romance. 

“…We no longer live in a world under heaven. All the troubles of the human soul flow from here. All our addictions and depression and the rage that simmers beneath the surface of our Christian facade...the deadness that characterizes much of our lives has one common source: We think this life is as good as it gets. Take away our hope of arrival and our journey becomes a death march. Even the best human life is unspeakably sad. If we do escape some of the bigger tragedies (and few of us do), life rarely matches our expectations. When we do get a taste of what we really long for, it never lasts. Every vacation comes to an end. Friends move away. Our careers don’t quite pan out. Sadly, we feel guilty about our disappointment, as though we ought to be more grateful. Of course we’re disappointed, we were made for so much more. ‘God has set eternity in our hearts.’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11) Our longing for heaven whispers to us in our disappointments and screams through our agony.” 

I was literally designed for eternity, for the Kingdom of Heaven. And so were you. Of course we're disappointed. We were made for the renewal of all things.