Lemons on Friday: Trusting God Through My Greatest HeartbreakSample

Where Is Our Hope?

A powerful practice to help move forward in our pain is to let our mess become our message. From the first days following Ben’s death, I prayed that God would use my pain for good. Something in me knew that the only pain I could survive would be the kind that helped others survive their own. 

My purpose is to bring hope to all of us who live in a world filled with lemons on Friday. Jesus—the grace-oozing, strength-giving, soul-redeeming person of Jesus—is the ultimate place from which all hope comes. He is why we can rest, pray, and surrender. He is the one who suffered so we don’t have to suffer alone or in despair. He holds the hurts of our pasts and the blessings of our futures in his mighty hands. He is the one we trust when all hope seems lost and goodness feels hard to find. He can turn our eyes from all that pains us to all that awaits us if we will let him adjust our vision.

For a long time all I saw when I looked around was an empty bed and an untouched closet full of things that Ben had worn just a few months before. I saw closed law books and dirty boots and a work bench littered with tools that no longer had anything to fix. I saw everything about my life that was empty and everything about my future that had been snatched away. I knew there had to be goodness and beauty even in my season of grieving, but at times I struggled to see it. The ugliness of our circumstances is 100 percent real, yet the beauty of God’s redemptive promises to us in the midst of those circumstances is just as real. Accepting that both of these realities are true is the most honest and most helpful way to endure the hardships we face.

I had to learn to see the dark and the light—to admit to myself that the present is ugly but my future and the truth of what is to come is infinitely beautiful. In the hands of Jesus, lemons on Friday will turn to lemonade on Sunday; we’re just not there yet. We can keep our eyes on eternity without ignoring the now.

The Christmas after Ben died God gave me a dream, a vision of Ben in heaven. It was a gift that assured me that the man I loved was covered with Christ, justified in his image, and now glorified in his presence. This dream changed my vision. Life was not easier after this dream, but I was now able and willing to see the goodness in my circumstances, not just the darkness. Once I was able to see this magnificent end to Ben’s story, I began to see a little more hope for my own.

Speaking God’s truth to yourself will adjust your vision and enable you to see some goodness even in your heartbreak. It will sow in you an unexplainable peace in the midst of unconquerable sadness. It will bring you back to life, little by little. As you ask tough questions and prayerfully pursue resolution, don’t forget that the comfort, peace, and healing presence of the Holy Spirit is yours for the taking. Only from there will lasting hope come.

Respond

How would you describe your personal relationship with Jesus? How can he be your source of hope today?

How has the truth about God given you hope for the future? How has it changed the way you see today?

What tough questions need resolution in our life? How can you lean into the comfort and wisdom that the Holy Spirit offers as you pursue hope?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for the gift of eternity and the hope that it gives me as I walk through the hurt I feel today. Help me to see your vision for my life and find peace and reassurance in you as I pursue hope and healing. I praise you for your provision of eternal life and that my hope is secure in you. Amen.