Take Heart

Searching For Hope

December 01, 2020 • Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 1 • Episode 17

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It can be difficult to experience hope when we are not rescued from our circumstances or protected from hardships. Amy gently reminds us today about Zechariah and Elizabeth, who experienced years of unanswered prayers. She encourages us to look to God for our hope in times of silence with three practical reminders. 

December 1, 2020

Key Topics/Timestamps:

  • 0:22:     Intro
  • 1:00:     The February Gift
  • 2:30:     The Psalms
  • 3:38:     Prayer
  • 5:18:     Zachariah & Elizabeth
  • 7:12:     The Gift of Quiet
  • 9:13:     Stop
  • 10:08:  Look
  • 10:57:  Listen
  • 12:00:  A Prayer
  • 12:40:  Outro

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Welcome to Take Heart, where our goal is to give you hope, offer insight and encouragement, so you can flourish in your journey as a Special Needs Mom. Each week Sara, Amy, and Carrie will explore a theme, and share an inspiring story, a practical tip, and an encouraging blessing using their combined experience of over 30 years of parenting special needs children. Thank you for joining us today. 

Hello and welcome. In the month of December, we are talking about the topic of Hope. As I've mentioned before I'm a mom of several children. There are six of them Now if you count my daughter-in-law, there's seven. Christmas can be a little bit crazy in our home as I try to prepare everyone's favorite food and shop for the gifts. In our family we have something we call the February gift or the March gift. That is the gift that I forget about in the midst of all the shopping, wrapping, which by the way I hate to wrap, and hiding presents and then getting all the presents under the tree. Almost every single year, I forget a present. I don't find that present until February or March when I start cleaning things out. So one of our children will typically get a gift later on in the year; the February gift, I forget it every year. I would like to say that that's the only thing I forget, but it's not. Sometimes I forget to hope. Advent is the season of hope. It's the season we search the sky for the star. We look in the scriptures for the road signs, watching and waiting for Emmanuel. But often in this life as a Special Needs Mom, it's easy to lose hope. 

The Psalms are a very comforting place to find our hope. There are a wide range of emotions expressed by the psalmist. I love the Psalms, but if I'm being honest I struggle with some of them. I struggle with verses like, “The Lord delivers me from all my troubles.” (Psalm 54:7). How about this one? “You are my hiding place, protect me from the trouble.” (Psalm 32:7) I don’t know what to do with verses like that. I truly believe that God holds our lives in His hands, that He cares and He sees. I've been told that prayer changes things, and I believe that. There are countless stories to back that claim up. But sometimes we can pray and pray, and our situation cannot change one bit. Where is the hope then? I believe God loves us, but sometimes if I'm being honest here too, it seems like He can forget us. I believe that God sees us and hears us, but sometimes this life seems to crush us, and I don't feel the least bit delivered from any trouble. That doesn't mean I stop trying to hope, and that doesn't mean I stop praying.

Prayer is a way to hope, and prayer may not change the hard situation you're facing, but it is an opportunity to bring your hope and your heartache to God. I have prayed many prayers in my almost 28 years of being a mom. I have prayed prayers begging God for help when my third son, Evan, screamed for the first six months of his life. I remember laying in bed at night with a screaming little baby and saying to God, “God you parted the Red Sea, you rose Lazarus from the dead, can you not make this baby stop crying?” Which He didn’t, but that's okay. I prayed for answers. I prayed for the right medications and doctors for my special needs kids. I prayed for actual physical help, like somebody showing up to bring me a meal. I prayed for God to change our situation. A lot of the times I prayed for me. I prayed for help to love and for peace and strength. I asked God to show me the way. I asked God to help me not to forget to hope in Him. It's so hard to pray with a heart that's breaking, or when you feel hopeless or exhausted. When you seem to see no end in sight to the challenges ahead, it's hard to remain hopeful when you know that a diagnosis will not change or that an illness may not be healed. It's really hard at times to be hopeful when some well-intentioned person from church says, “Just have more faith. Wait until you see what God can do.”  That actually makes me feel the opposite of hope. 

If you're in a place of feeling hopeless right now, I want to tell you a story of someone else who felt hopeless. In Luke 1, we hear the story of John the Baptist’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. The Bible says that they were both righteous before God, they walked blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of God. But they were unable to have a child. Elizabeth was barren, and they were old. Now Zechariah was a high priest, so he was in the Holy of Holies doing his priestly duty when an angel came to him and told him he was going to have a child. Zechariah was like, (this is my translation) “What? How can this be? I’m old. My wife's old. How in the world are we going to have a baby? Once again, my translation. Zechariah was shocked, and the angel said to him, “Behold you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place because you did not believe my words.” Zechariah was silenced. He was silenced for his doubts. Now he was a faithful man, and I wonder if his doubt was just a result of living with an unanswered prayer for a long long time. I have to admit that if the angel Gabriel showed up right now and told me all would be well with my daughter, who has reactive attachment disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome, I would question it too. It's not that I don't believe God can do it, I just stopped believing it will happen here. I take a lot of comfort in Zecharias's doubt because he was a faithful man. He was a high priest. It's not like he didn't believe in God. He had been steeped in the promises of help and rescue of the Psalms. He heard the stories that God could part a sea and make water come from a rock. That was his entire faith story, and yet he still doubted. 

We can believe a lot of big things about God, things that are true, but when our hopes and prayers are not answered, we begin to lose hope, not that God can't do it, but that it may not happen for us. I used to think that God silencing Zechariah was only a punishment, but now I'm wondering if it was also a mercy. Ten months of silence allowed him to ponder the goodness of God. The Bible says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Ruth Haley Barton says, “Be still and know means to be still and let go of your grip.” Maybe in the silence of those ten months, Zechariah was able to know, hear, and see and love God more. When he finally was able to speak, he praised God. Maybe it's the same with you. It is with me. I don't doubt that God can work, but that He will work here. Maybe in the midst of all our doubting, over talking, planning, we’re missing something. Maybe we need the gift of being quiet - to really know, hear, feel His goodness, and remember that we are in His hands. Psalm 33:22 says, “Let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us for we have set our hope in you.” Psalm 62:5 says, “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from Him.” We need to remember that our hope is not in us or our solutions to our problems, but in God alone. We may not get the answer we want, but He is working and redeeming and loving us. 

So here's my challenge, what if instead of looking for solutions or feeling hopeless, we looked at Jesus with hopeful eyes. How can we do this? How can we look at Jesus with hopeful eyes? How can we put our hopes in His mercy and love? I have three steps for you: Stop. Look and Listen. 

Stop, first of all: Stop. Remember when you were a kid and you would play musical chairs and the music would get faster and faster. You'd rush around and the music would stop, and you would plop down all sweaty and breathless at the closest chair. Remember that feeling? Imagine that feeling in your life as a special needs mom. Maybe you feel that way now? You can sit down whenever you are. Stop and you can be who you are with God. Last week we had a situation in our family that was heartbreaking and hard. I'm going to be completely transparent with you and tell you when I stopped to be who I was with God, I was mad, I was angry at God, I was sad. I didn't wait to get all holy and spiritual. I plopped down exactly where I was and I told God exactly what I felt. So stop and meet God exactly where you are.

The second is: Look. Look for signs of Emmanuel God With Us. There are always signs of His glory and His presence, we just have to stop and look. Drink in the beauty that is within reach, not when everything works out according to plan. I know that may be hard to do right now in this very busy season. You may forget to look, and you may be sick of hearing Sleigh Ride everywhere you go. But this season, with all its challenges is the season we celebrate Emmanuel. The weary world rejoices in this season. So how can you a weary special needs mom rejoice in this season and look for the signs of Emmanuel God With Us. 

And the last one is: Listen. Be still and know that He is God. Let go of your grip and listen to what God has for you. Allow your silence to remind you of His goodness. Now that may be a tall order in a house full of kids and all the issues and responsibilities you have as a special needs mom, but even if it's two minutes, five minutes. Maybe wait in the car just a couple minutes longer before going in. Maybe you turn off your phone and while you're waiting in the car line for school, you have no radio and you’re just quiet. Be quiet and let go of your grip and listen to what God has for you. My encouragement for you in this season is this: Keep choosing God and hope. Remember that He is always with you. Move towards the warm light of love of His love and hope. Remember that you are held safe in love by Emmanuel God With Us. 

I'd like to close with a prayer. Lord help me to stop, look, and listen to you. Help me not to listen to the lies that fear may be telling me. But help me to look up. Help me to look up with expectant hope. Let me not know the hope in my own expectations, but help me to hope in you. Help me to see you in the season and look to you with hopeful eyes. Help me to remember that the Lord will redeem the souls of his servants and none of those who hope in you will stumble. 

Thank you so much for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are so grateful that you are walking on this journey with us. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcast, so you'll never miss a show. You can follow us on Instagram @takeheartspecialmoms. You can also sign up for our newsletter on our website at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com. You can also look for our show notes and our transcripts on our website. If you have any questions or comments, just follow the link in our show notes. We would love to hear your story. Come back next week and listen to what Carrie has to say about hope. Thank you for joining us.