Replacing Doubt with Hope

   

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     I’m often a rose-colored-glasses wearing type of person. I see the good in people, even if they’ve proven countless times that they can’t be trusted. I try to find the silver lining of a situation, even if there’s hardly any good that can be dug out of it. I want to make things work even when it has been strongly proven that it won’t. I am a glass-half-full, positive vibes only, “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” girl.

But only under one condition.

And that is…

The person is anyone but me.

The situation has to do with anyone but myself.

The thing to be worked out doesn’t involve me.

I am so good about telling other people how much they are loved by God.

I encourage others by reminding them that God is in everything they face, even the hard stuff.

I remind them that God will work everything out for their good and His glory.

But for some reason, I struggle deeply with taking hold of any of that for myself.

And the funny thing is, I have a long list of experiences with God that prove these statements to be true. God has been with me every step of my life, guiding every little thing- even before I was born- to ensure that His plan for my life would come to fruition. I can see it in my journey to become a teacher. I can see it in the long winding road that led me to Justin. I can especially see it in everything we went through to bring our Rainbow Baby into this world.

Yet I’m afflicted with doubt, over and over again.

It can be so easy for doubt to creep in when we’re faced with pregnancy loss and infertility. When we’re navigating the haze of grief, exhaustion, and uncertainty, we cannot possibly imagine even God could bring anything good from our suffering. As our anxieties around these experiences grow, we begin to doubt God has anything good in store for us because all we can see is a mess. The longer we entertain these feelings, the more deeply ingrained they become, the harder it is to see the light God is bringing into our lives.

And just like any of the other things we’ve explored so far, doubt doesn’t leave us when we finally achieve motherhood. If anything, it worsens. We doubt ourselves, our ability to parent our children, and even God’s ability to equip us for the work or bring us out of a tough season. I remember when my son started cutting his first tooth, about a year ago. He had slept beautifully for a long stretch of his life up until that point, and all of a sudden, he was up all night and was often inconsolable. I could not figure out what was causing the disruption, and even thought it might be teething, so I gave him some pain relievers at bedtime in the hopes it would improve his sleep. It didn’t, and so I thought there was another culprit. For two weeks, I functioned on very little sleep, having to go to work all day utterly exhausted from being up all night trying to comfort my child. Every night as he cried or refused to be put down to sleep, I prayed to God, begging Him to reveal the causes of my son’s discomfort, asking Him to give my son some peace so we could all sleep. Nothing changed, despite the desperation with which my prayers grew each night. I got to the point where I doubted there was anything God could do to rescue me from that misery, and I quit asking Him to help.

Then, two weeks later, we got up one morning and I noticed a little bit of white poking up through my son’s gums. Upon closer inspection, there indeed, was his first tooth. Did he go back to sleeping great after that? Nope- at least not until about a year later! Did I ever get an understanding for why God let us endure two weeks of sleep deprivation? Nope- and you better believe it’s on my list of questions to ask Him when I finally see Him in heaven! But I did begin to see that my doubt in God was misplaced, even if it didn’t seem like He heard or answered my prayers.

God designed every single part of how we function biologically as human beings- including how babies get their first set of teeth. He knew exactly what was going on with my son during those two weeks we were up all night as he tried to cut that first one. He knew how that situation was going to end, and He ordained that entire experience. Like I said, I’m not exactly sure to what end on this side of heaven, but I am more confident now that God sees all of these types of mom struggles and He blesses every single one of them.

How do we let go of our doubt to gain this confidence? We put our hope in God.

I was stunned to discover that the first time the word “hope” appears in Scripture is in the book of Ruth. We make it all the way through Genesis (where God promises Abraham he will be the father of nations), Exodus (where Moses leads the people of our Egypt), and Joshua (where Joshua leads them into the Promised Land), without one use of the word “hope”? That was shocking to me.

Tucked in between Judges and 1 Samuel is the book of Ruth. At the end of Judges, the people of Israel are a trainwreck. God sent them judge after judge to lead them in His ways, and it would work for a little while, but then the judge would die and the people would go right back to their old, corrupt ways. The last verse of the book says, “In those days, Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (verse 21:25). Eventually, when we get to the books of Samuel, Israel will get the king they ask for, first in Saul and then David.

But before that time, we hear the story of Ruth, and it is here where Scripture first mentions hope.

The occurrence comes right at the beginning of Ruth’s story. There was a famine in Bethlehem, so a man named Elimelek and his family left for Moab. Soon after they arrive, Elimelek dies, leaving his wife Naomi a widow. Her two sons marry, but within a decade they are both dead as well. Talk about having no hope.

Naomi hears about how, during that famine ten years ago, God provided food for His people, so she decides she’s going to return to Bethlehem. She leaves her house with her two daughters-in-law and tells them they should return to their families so they can find happiness with new husbands. They both cry, saying they want to go with her, but she persists. Staying with her is pointless for them; she’s too old to have any more sons that she could give to them as husbands: “Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me- even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons- would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” (Ruth 1:12-13).

The first instance of the word “hope” in the Bible, and we find it here, where Naomi is describing how hopeless and bitter her situation is now that she is a widow and childless. She places the blame squarely on God- He is the one who has turned against her and taken away all of her hope.

You may be wondering what is to be learned for this use of the word “hope.” It certainly doesn’t quench our doubts, does it? It almost says, “See? Told ya so…” But there’s more to the story here.

Naomi’s daughter-in-law Orpah decides to return to her family, and bids a weepy farewell to her mother-in-law. But Ruth clings to Naomi, refusing to turn back, and insists, “Where you go, I’ll go. Where you stay, I’ll stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God” (verse 16b). Ruth is a Moabite, and Naomi’s people are the Israelites. Ruth is from a culture that worships many Gods, while Naomi worships God (who she thinks has turned His back on her). By all definitions, what she says here is inaccurate, yet she is so determined to stay with Naomi that she’s willing to abandon her people and her culture.

In the midst of her doubt, God shows Naomi a sliver of hope here, providing a daughter to accompany her home.

Naomi and Ruth ultimately arrive in Bethlehem, where Naomi learns of a relative of hers named Boaz. He is a kinsman redeemer- someone Ruth can marry to restore her situation after being widowed. God works a beautiful story to bring Ruth and Boaz together, which also restores Naomi, and later in history, brings Jesus through their line. 

God, who is always there working behind the scenes, brings hope from a hopeless situation.

The Hebrew word for “hope” in Ruth 1:12, has a pretty straightforward definition: “hope, expectation, ground of hope, things hoped for (outcome), absolute hope, hope of deliverance.” But there was another definition, the first one listed, that jumped out at me as odd: “cord.” This definition appears twice in Scripture, in Joshua 2:18 and 21. When I clicked on the references, I gasped when I saw what story they came from.

I am oh so fond of the stories that spotlight women in Scripture. Ruth is one of those stories; Rahab’s is another. Rahab was a prostitute living in Jericho, which was the land that was Promised to the Israelites. Before Joshua could lead them in the land, he sent two spies ahead to scope out the situation. When the king discovered they were there, they sought safety in the home of Rahab, who hid them from the king. She had heard what their God could do, so she asked them to protect her and her family when they returned. They promised they would, and directed her to put a red cord in her window so that they would know who to protect. She did just that, and was saved from destruction when the Israelites took the Promised Land. She lived among them for the rest of her life.

And guess what? She, too, became part of the line of Jesus. In fact, she’s the mother of Boaz.

That cord in her window was a sign of hope. It was an indicator that she believed in the spies who had promised her safety. Furthermore, it was a sign that she believed in God. God honored this hope, blessing Rahab with a son who would become a kinsman redeemer for two widowed women who needed His hope in a deeply hopeless situation. And this entire family led to Jesus, the hope of the world.

This Hebrew word for “hope” also appears in Jeremiah 29:11, which just so happens to be my life verse. It didn’t show up on my initial list of verses containing the word “hope” because in the King James Version, it is translated “expected end:” 

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

The word for “hope” here is connected to another Hebrew word whose meaning is “end, latter time, posterity, last, hindermost.” These two Hebrew words combine in Jeremiah 29:11 to mean “a future, happy close of life, suggesting the idea of a posterity [all future generations], promised to the righteous.”

What a turn around this is to the way Naomi is describing her lack of hope in Ruth 1:12! God thinks all of this about us! He wants our life to be beautiful, from opening to close, and He wants that to carry through many generations to come. We see that unfold in the family of Rahab, Ruth, and Boaz, whose generations include Jesus! And when we place our hope in Him, we will see that unfold in our families, too.

Replacing our doubt with hope allows us to recapture our joy by helping us believe that God can take our broken pieces- our pregnancy loss, our infertility, our motherhood chaos- and create something beautiful. He’s weaving together a marvelous tapestry of hope, and we will see it unfold for generations to come, if only we believe Him for it.