HOPE and Sadness...At The Same Time

Last night, there was a get together last night with some new friends of mine.
I have had it on my calendar for a couple weeks and was really looking forward to it.
But then...yesterday happened.
It was just a really hard day.
I won't go into all the details here, but there is a lot of sadness and grief we are experiencing.
I am sure some of you are too.

But as the day went on, I felt the sadness moving towards despair.
Despair is the complete loss or absence of hope.
I could feel it creeping in.

I then started to feel resistance to going to hang with my new friends.
The voices began...
"I don't know them that well."
"I don't want to be a downer for these guys."
"My wife probably just needs me to stay home with her."
"There is going to be too many people there I don't know."
"I am really tired."

But something inside of me just kept stirring me to go.
As I sat on the couch debating...I realized I was in the WAR.
I was feeling major resistance to going.
Which usually means...there is something good that is going to happen, and the enemy does not want you to experience.

The bigger the WAR you feel around something the more important it is that you show up to it.

So, I pulled myself together, got in my Jeep and drove over.
And of course, it was great.
I started to laugh, we made inappropriate jokes, we talked about our kids and families and everything going on.
We connected.
Towards the end, one of the guys who was from out of town who runs a ministry out in Utah told a bit of his story and started talking about how, "...if you’re in the ministry you're going to have bullets flying all the time, but you will have peace like you have never had."

The guys started talking about their stories and hard times they went through and how they made it to the other side.

My despair floated away; I saw the HOPE that was right in front of me.

My sadness isn't gone, and I don't think it should be, but it isn't despair today.

Sometimes we have to hold HOPE in one hand and sadness in the other.
It isn’t something to solve or fix, it just something to hold the tension of.

I hope you have an incredible day!