Welcome Back Hope

For years now I have taken an agnostic view on the world, life, and creation. I didn't really believe and yet a part of me was afraid not to believe. I couldn't see how such a thing could really be possible. Life felt like such drudgery. How could there be purpose? Why would someone have created a place and beings that were all so random? None of it made sense. It was all too illogical for me. And yet....
I wanted to believe.
It was a huge realization for me. I wasn't just afraid not to believe. I actually wanted to believe.

A few months ago I felt that want growing. I began to seek out answers to my questions. I wanted to not just ask "how?" and "why?", I wanted to know the answers.

My search for answers led me to a church. Now, this was an extremely important step in my journey toward belief. The wrong church (many of which I have attended in my lifetime) would have pushed me right back into that agnostic view in which I'd felt comfortable for so long. Or worse, it could have pushed me beyond agnostic and right into the depths of atheism. It was a matter of pure grace that I landed in the back row of the particular church that I did. A place where their very purpose is to reach those who are lost, those who are searching and those who have nearly lost all hope. A place for people like me.

I have never been one to spout religion to those around me. One aspect of organized religion that I truly hate is the act of pushing that religion onto others. My strong feelings on that mean that I will not spout religion here on this public forum, nor will I push for others to believe simply because I do. I bring all this up here today simply because it is important to my climb from the rocks.

Today I heard a message that helped me to take another step up in that climb. I wish to share it here as a way to journal that step.

I don't understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience shows that I agree that the law is good. But I can't help myself... what a miserable person I am! Who will free me?
Romans 7:15, 24

I found this message powerful in two ways. One, I have felt that way myself. And two, because I know this is how Hub feels. He has said to me almost this exact message. Not the same words of course, but indeed the same thoughts and feelings that it expresses. This is the very way his SA makes him feel.

There have been many times that I heard Hub saying the words, but I never really let the true feelings he was sharing sink in. I never allowed myself to view him as a tortured soul. I only ever looked at myself as the injured party to his weakness, to him allowing himself to do the things he did. What a miserable person he is. It is something he recognizes and I think that recognition is a sign that there is hope.

Hope is something I've not felt in a long time. It's good to welcome it back in our lives.