Last week was a long week.  My mind was spinning as I entered a small church building in Stockton for the Strip Everything Away Tour on Saturday night.  I had slept most of the car ride, lulled to sleep by the delta roads, and was still struggling to feel fully awake. Although...if I am honest... I don't know that my soul has felt fully awake for many months now. As the room filled with music and people rose to worship, I felt more like a person going through the motions than a person filled with the Spirit of God.  Slowly the music began to fill my ears and lyrical phrases began to filter into my heart. I started to feel more and more awake...and then more and more alive.  After several songs, I saw the following words come up on the screen.  Instantly I was faced with the word that best represent the feeling that has crippled me over the last four years of my life...barren.

"I speak to barrenness
I command life within
Come live you desolate
Spring up you living well"

Barren describes not only my infertility, but the aching in my heart over every hard thing that I have experienced or watched my loved ones experience over the past 4 years.  I felt barren as the years slipped by...one...two...three...four...and I did not become pregnant.  I felt barren when I sat in a fertility clinic and contemplated whether or not to pursue fertility treatments.  I felt barren when I found out that the wait for our son from Ethiopia would be 4 or 5 times as long as we expected. I felt barren when I realized that there was no way that we could afford a private infant domestic adoption simultaneously with the Ethiopia adoption, and even if we could I felt barren at the thought of hoping for a baby only to have the risk of a birth parent change their mind.   I feel barren when I think back at the ways in which my parent's divorce has affected my family and my inability to bring healing.  I feel barren when I think about the death, illness, and struggles that are gripping the loved ones in my life.  The barrenness has consumed everything leaving a desolate space within me where hope previously resided.  

"Healing power flow like a river
Reveal your heart to every tormented soul
Emmanuel come quick to deliver
So let hope in
Open up your walls
Hope conquers all"

 Hope never left me, but I built up a wall to protect myself from the struggle.  At the start of our journey towards a family four years ago, hope permeated every breath. When the Holy Spirit led us to adopt from Ethiopia we were propelled forward by a hope so rich that we could barely contain our joy.  I have been anxiously attempting to be filled with hope that my family and friends will be restored from the things that they are struggling with in their lives.  But, then I become impatient and I allow... doubt... fear... jealousy...and sorrow...to build up walls...higher and higher... surrounding me completely...until I can no longer see the hope that is before me.  I have refused to let myself believe, deep down where it counts that hope really conquers all.  I say it, I beg and plead to feel it, but any temporary glimmer is quickly replaced with barrenness.  I have allowed fear to rule my heart and my feet for the last several months.   I haven't trusted that Emmanuel will come quick enough to deliver...and that isn't the way that I want to live my life because it is a lie. 

"There goes all my doubts
There goes all my pain
On that day You rose again
Sin no longer stains
There goes all my questioning
There goes all my fears
On that day of reckoning
Hope has reappeared"

Sin hasn't disappeared and suffering will continue until this world is no longer, but because of the sacrifice of my Savior it no longer stains. It no longer stains... I think that God is teaching me to trust that hope is always present, even if the pain and suffering doesn't go away...especially if the pain and suffering remains.  Hope isn't dependent upon God answering my prayers.  Hope is even greater in despair and in the unknown because of who we know Christ to be and what He accomplished on the cross.  God is not dead and that changes everything.  I am not barren.  I am alive and I am ready to begin the process of tearing down the walls of doubt...jealousy...fear...and sorrow...brick by brick until nothing but hope remains.  Hope conquers all.  



All of the lyrics in bold were written by Daniel Bashta.  Check out the lyric video below.  http://youtu.be/e5SWqNShtnY