My Story Of Hope

"Pieces"

Amanda Cook

The song above tells of a man I met on my journey 

who has given me hope to live again. 

He is my God. A God of real tangible hope.

My story. I struggle every time I'm asked to tell my story. Why? I guess because it's hard to sit down and go over the past accounts. So many of them have withdrawals that I never saw coming. The "perfect" account of my story would be one without the debits of loss and grief. Yet, I know all too well today, in this moment, my "perfect" story will only be perfected in Heaven. 

And this, the new belief system that allows me to peacefully make the statement above is what I'm most thankful for today. My heart has been healed in ways I never thought would be possible 10 years ago. This hope that flows through me is a living miracle with in me that I want to share with the world. The seeds of hope were planted in my heart at the moment of deep tragedy. I was standing over my 4-year-old son who had just entered the gates of Heaven. He was in a wonderful place and I was being displaced from everything in my perfect little world. 


My whole life I tried so hard to be good and do the right things. I believed in God, but I lived most of my life believing He was disappointed in me. The mistakes I had made along my journey were ones that kept me at a distance from God. My belief system was, "Keep trying to be perfect, and make things look perfect" and someday HE might allow me back in. That was a lie I was believing and living from most of my life. When my 4 year old son Jack died, December 23,2004, I came face to face with a reality of this world that pushed me to seek another world. I wanted to see Jack again and Jesus offered me a better choice. When the choice was offered it was in the midst of my messy less than perfect life. I had been keeping Jesus at a distance so I could get things right and all He ever wanted was for me to see how much He loved me. 

Life is found in the way we see. At the beginning of my journey all I could see was my mistakes and heartaches. I walked around for a while in a fog of pain desperately hoping for it to lift. After trying to fix things on my own I began to look for help. God answered my prayers with people. He began placing people in my life that helped me see Jesus in a different way. Over time and with their help, I developed my own personal relationship with Jesus. He has healed my broken heart by transforming the way I see and think about Him. The only way you will find true healing is by knowing Him as loving Father. When you know He loves you and He is for you then you can think and see His way. His thoughts begin to heal our hearts to change the way we feel so we can live again with hope. 



 If you are experiencing hopeless in an area of your life, it is because you’re believing a lie. There is hope in every circumstance. Jesus offers us hope in all things. He is the one wild card you keep in your deck that can trump all the hopeless circumstances of this world. If we invite Him in He can make the impossible, possible. He only asks us to call upon Him and invite Him into the impossible circumstances. We are not required to figure things out or clean up our messy lives, that is His job. He is God, and we are human. It's just that simple. He knows our limitations and our humanness. He created us. He wants us to understand our role as humans. We need Him for every step we take to guide us and grow us along the way.


Which brings me back to the "pearl of great price” that I would like to share with you from my story. This truth given to me by Jesus has given me the will to live again. It gave me the freedom to fail and learn from my mistakes. It took away the fear to ask for help. It introduced to me a Father who wanted to help me and rewrite my story to be one of great hope. I don't have to be perfect to be part of His family. He loves me just as I am, right where I'm at along my journey. 


Did you know that one of the biblical meanings for perfect is "to mature". Our worldly definition of perfect sets us up for failure. Perfect celebrates perfection. Perfection demands that we own and master things that God only called us to manage.  The lie we must see is this, masters don’t need help. They should know how to do everything on their own and RIGHT the first time they do it. This kind of belief system built with in me a prideful independent woman who was afraid to ever ask for help. 

Being perfect is not what God expects from us. He called us to discipleship. To follow Him and learn from Him. We are managers of what is given to us by Him. He is the owner and we learn from Him how to be the manager. Managers need instruction and direction and this way of thinking takes away the pressure of ownership. He expects us to see ourselves as He sees us, a human who is frail and weak in his or her own strength and understanding. He wants to be God for us. He wants to show us the way through our circumstances that help us overcome the enemy’s intentions for our harm. He wants us to see that "perfect" to Him is when we choose to turn to Him first. I think it makes Him most proud of you when you’re not afraid to turn to Him in the midst of your less than perfect mess. It's in that very moment that He reaches down from heaven and pulls you close to His heart and loves on you until you have the courage to live again. 


He is love. He loves us and His heart for us is restoration. He wants to restore us not to be the same, but better than we were before we broke. If we have experienced loss, His promise is to restore what has been lost. I am someone who has experienced loss. I am also someone who felt like a prisoner who hoped for a long time to feel better. I can testify today that hope is now a reality. He restored me, not as I was before but so much better than I could have ever imagined or done on my own. I am and always will be a prisoner of hope. The community God gave me has been my stronghold, a place of safety to heal and grow. Within this community I was encouraged to see God's Kingdom and economy in a whole new way. In His Kingdom we learn how to fight the unseen world around us.  We embrace our weakness so Jesus can be the strongest in us and through us. We know that the people who feel like the last in this world will be first in His world. We know that resurrection life is always birthed out of the short-lived death of this world. 

There are many stories in the bible that show us God's heart for restoration. Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Joshua & Jesus are just a few to dig into. Remember, God can not tell a lie so lean on His faithfulness until you see your own restoration. Hope is not wishing for good, hope is knowing good is coming. So we plant the seeds of hope given to us by other's testimony. We water them daily with prayer, holding on to faith and love until we can share our own story of resurrection and restoration. 

"Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; 

Today I declare that I will restore to you double."

Zechariah 9:12


So, hold on you prisoner of hope. Return to the safe place of Godly community and wait patiently for the double portion of restoration that your Loving Father in Heaven is preparing for you now:) I promise, it's going to be good:) 

Below is a written piece I contributed to a book entitled 

"The Reason We Speak" - by Marybeth Whalen

It shares more about the beginning of my family’s story and how God was always with us. 

Click on the page below and it will scroll down for you to read.