I attended a funeral for the father of new friend of mine recently. In our understanding he died too soon. He was only in his early 60′s. Although I never had the opportunity to meet this man, his funeral impacted my life. The tributes and memories shared by family and friends were beautiful. We viewed a slide presentation set to music, tracing the journey of his life. The one thing that really spoke to my heart was that this man had truly lived.

He was an adventurer. Fear didn’t hold him captive. He lived out loud. He wasn’t afraid to follow the dreams God had placed in his heart, and yet he didn’t take foolish risks. He enjoyed life to the full. In many ways he has gone from living to living.

My life in comparison would be such a shadow. Many of us would be likened to “dead men walking” in contrast. Oh, maybe outwardly we’re going through the motions. Jumping through all the right hoops. We know how to play the “Game of Life”. For generations it’s been the same. We’ve read the rules. We know the expectations. Years go by, but our passion is getting buried deeper and deeper. We are allowing ourselves and others to dig our own grave…only we’re still breathing. We’re being buried alive.

I read recently of someone who, though living, described themselves as dead. Have you been there? Have you been to that dark place that numbs the heart. Apathy is your new normal. You feel indifferent…listless. You’ve lost interest in all your surroundings. Dejection and weariness characterize your existence. You are no longer a participant, but a spectator. You have eyes that see, without seeing. Ears that hear without hearing. A heart still capable of loving has become your prison. You feel empty, drained, alone.

Unbelievers are not the only ones held captive. Many Christians live life behind locked doors. Self-imposed cells. Discouragement, pain, rejection, insecurity, fear, accusations, past, present, future all build up walls. Gasping for breath you feel smothered, yet weakness and familiarity keep you hostage. It’s often comforting to stay in the security of this new normal. Realizing work and effort may lay ahead, awakening holds too many uncertainties. A strange part of you enjoys the attention, pity and compassion from others. Silence is your truest friend and your most consuming enemy.

The problem? Right now life seems too overwhelming. Negatives far out-weigh the positives. Somehow your focus has shifted from what can be, to what is. Often it’s a slow fade. Unfulfilled desires in a marriage, demanding children, a stressful job, painful, abusive memories, illness, …disappointment in God. Oh, you’d probably not come right out and say that, but somewhere along the line, you’ve felt God has let you down. You had plans. You had desire. Your life was filled with enthusiasm and drive. You’ve been robbed in the cruelest way possible. You don’t have to worry about being one step closer to the grave, you’re already there.

How can I write of this? I’ve been there. I am all too familiar with premature death. But, can I offer you hope? If you are still breathing, you are not dead. Like a seed that may sit dormant all winter long, you are experiencing a winter in your soul. The season will change. Like the story of the “Secret Garden”, there are treasures in you to be unearthed. Darkness can have a valuable purpose.

I don’t know what God will do to call you back to life again, but He will. God is a God of Resurrection.  He specializes in bringing the dead back to life. He wants to see you running and leaping. He comes to you, as He did to the blind beggar named Bartimaeus and asks, “What do you want Me to do for you?” He will not force Himself on you. He holds the keys to your release in open, nail-scarred hands and offers them to you. He is not the one holding you in bondage. Self-imposed shackles are the only things holding you hostage. Today could be your Prison Break!

Acts 16:26 “Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose.”

Editor’s Pick by Robin @ PENSIEVE. Although we didn’t meet in person, Joy and I first crossed paths at SheSpeaks in June. Her signature, “Joyful”, suits her, all of her posts are infused with light and life. I love reading Christian writers who don’t offer trite, “Sunday school answers”, and Joy candidly shares her journey of faith without falling into that trap. Subscribing to Ponderings in your reader will bring joy to your life, I promise. Clicking through to Joy’s original post will allow you see her comments as well.

A few weeks ago I realized that I am getting better at praying.

We were canoeing in the Boundary Waters, a remote, uninhabited wilderness in northern Minnesota. I should preface this by admitting that I am not a canoeist. Prior to this outing I had canoed twice in my entire life, both times when Brad and I were first dating (that alone speaks volumes). But Brad wanted to take the kids on a little adventure while we were in Minnesota, and I wasn’t going to be the only stuffed shirt who stayed home.

We glided across the glinting lake, our paddles dipping rhythmically in and out of the water. The kids dangled their fingers in the lake as we wove around lily pads and through golden lake grass, undulating like ribbons just beneath the surface. Noah admired the lavender iris springing from the edges of the marshy shore. It was, in a word, Heaven.

After about two hours of easy paddling, we pulled the canoe onto an island and portaged (i.e. lugged really heavy, cumbersome canoe across dry land while being viciously attacked by massive swarms of mosquitoes) to the other side. But as we rounded the corner on the far side of the island, we were surprised to find ourselves nearly knocked flat by a gale force wind. Somehow the wind that had been a barely perceptible breeze at our backs had escalated to Hurricane Andrew.

Brad and I secured the kids’ life vests, and as we plunged in, pushing off the rocks lining the shore with our paddles, it took about 30 seconds for me to realize that the return trip was not going to be relaxing. Though I was paddling as hard as I could, when I glanced at the shore, it wasn’t moving; we were literally paddling in place. To make matters worse, the water was no longer gently lapping but was instead gushing over the bow of the canoe in a torrent, and every few minutes the canoe threatened to turn broadside against the waves.

“Michelle! Michelle! ” Brad yelled over the wind from the stern. “You have to paddle faster, paddle harder! The canoe has to stay against the waves, we can’t get broadsided!” The kids were terrified, and I was afraid, too (not sure about Brad; he doesn’t let on in situations such as this). When I looked over my shoulder, Noah was clutching the sides of the canoe with a steely grip, his eyes wide like he was witnessing Loch Ness rear out of the lake. Meanwhile Rowan was screaming over and over, “We’re all gonna die! We’re all gonna die!”

I tried to console them. “No, no, no, everything’s okay, we’re going to be just fine, everything’s going to be just fine, it’s just a little wavy, that’s all.” The problem is, you can’t really speak soothingly in hushed tones in a 30 mph wind. As I screamed reassurances, my voice pinched and shrill, the kids just looked more terrified.

And that’s when I prayed. I’ll admit, it was a combination of cursing and praying…but this is progress. A year or two ago, it would have been entirely cursing. So when I wasn’t blasting Brad in my head – “Stupid, stupid idea. Mr. Stupid Nature Man dragging us out here in this god-forsaken stupid wilderness.” (you get the idea), I was praying, “Please God, please God, please don’t let the canoe turn over, please help us get to shore safely, please give me the strength to keep paddling, please keep my children safe.” I even thought about suggesting to the kids that we pray out loud, together. But I ditched that idea when I realized it probably would have panicked them further. “What??? Mommy’s praying? Mommy’s praying! We’re all gonna die!!!”

We made it to shore; I lived to tell about it (and complain about it). And when it was all over, I realized two things in the aftermath. One: that I was seriously lacking in upper body strength; so much, in fact, that turning the knob on the radio dial would require two hands (one hand to turn the dial and the other to brace the arm of the hand turning the dial) for a full week. And two, that I could turn to God, that I would turn to God, in a time of distress. Sure it was a desperation prayer, but those count, too – especially when you feel in your heart that those prayers will make a difference.

Editor’s pick by Michele from Sparks and Butterflies.  Michelle is a new-to-me read. What attracted me was her simple, matter-of-fact approach to describing her relationship with God, as well as her honesty in the direction and changes this relationship has had. When I read her, I feel like I’m reading truth – warts and all. Please check out her original post, and then be sure to subscribe to her feed.

{by Maggie from Okay, Fine, Dammit.}

They march into his home, the law on their sides, and rip him and his father from their family like scabs. It is November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht. The “Night of the Broken Glass,” the night of the breaking family tree branches, all crushed beneath the German soldiers’ boots. Obliterated.

At night he lies on an eight-foot plywood “bed” with seven other men and he thinks, This is the end. The crisp, frigid air is as merciless as his captors and so he gives his own underwear to his father to give him just one more layer of warmth. He watches men murdered in a manner too wretched, too unbelievable, to be written casually by a stranger here. He notes that the officers are hardest on the most devout of his people, the ones praying on broken knees each night for a saving that never comes.

Seventy years later he will stand, shaking, a 92-year-old Jewish great-grandfather, an honored guest in our tiny church, and in a thick accent he will tell the congregation that he left his faith behind in that concentration camp’s latrine. That he associates the idea of faith with certain death.

Ironically, his very presence will fill me with hope.

***

I grew up in the famed Driftless Area, a particularly beautiful patch of Wisconsin passed over by the glaciers and snatched up by blond haired, blue-eyed Scandinavians. My small town was 99% white, 105% Christian. I had dark hair and eyes, olive skin, and a nose not nearly as button-cute as those of my friends on the dairy farms. I knew my last name ended in –berg, but I had no context for what that meant and I didn’t think a thing of it. Every year we put up our Christmas tree. We wrapped gifts, hung stockings, told stories about the baby in the manger. I don’t remember when I figured out my dad was Jewish; he never went to temple. He eschewed all religion, hadn’t attended services since his Bar Mitzvah, fled New York at the age of 17, met my mother (a Wisconsin farmer’s daughter) at 19, and never looked back.

I was in sixth grade social studies class the first time I ever heard the word “Holocaust.” We watched a movie called Escape from Sobibor and it was so powerful that when the screen flashed to a line of people headed to the gas chamber, not a single sixth-grader giggled at the sight of all those naked bodies. It was the first time I ever thought, That could have been me. That’s what Jewish means. I called my grandparents that night to talk about what I’d learned in school. They told me I was never to bring it up again.

For a long time I struggled with this mystery of my heritage, with an identity I couldn’t claim. In a way I’ve remained ignorant, and in other ways I probably overcompensated. In college I studied History, specifically Nazi concentration camps. Twice in high school I visited Auschwitz. I saw it all for myself, the claw marks on the cement walls, the piles and piles of eyeglasses and human hair. Afterward I tried again to talk about it with my grandpa, a U.S. World War II veteran. Normally a kind, gentle, laughing man, he was uncharacteristically furious with me. He said, “Why would you ever set foot in that place willingly, Maggie Snow?”

He has since, all these years later, softened about the subject. He speaks more freely now about his friends from the tennis court with the Auschwitz tattoos on their arms, about the refugees that slept in his childhood bed, about the china he and grandma passed on to me 12 years ago, a wedding gift that survived Hitler though its original owners didn’t.

Sometimes I think about the kind of faith my distant relatives must have had to send their precious belongings on ahead like that, certain they’d arrive later to claim them. Or, maybe they knew they were doomed but they just didn’t want the Nazis to get even one more beautiful thing, who’s to know? All I know is that we’re all here—my grandpa, my father, me, my children–because of that hope.

***

I refuse to look away from hard things, and so many come into view around the holidays. For me, the holidays are still magical, filled to bursting with love and riches both figurative and literal. For others, though, the holidays are wicked reminders. I feel like it’s our responsibility to recognize that, to somehow honor both.

I know all this can seem a little gloomy. I know my loved ones worry about me now and again, that my husband knows not to read me the sad headlines because I can’t let them go. I know some of you have told me you can’t look at the stories posted on Violence UnSilenced, and I empathize with you but I’m gonna keep looking—not because it makes me some kind of misguided martyr, but because it actually gives me hope. I said in my last post that faith is hard work, that I’d taken some blows lately that made me doubt. But today I woke up hopeful, because the threat to faith and the dawning of hope are deliciously intertwined for me.

I have seen battered women find and believe in themselves again. I have helped Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild their homes from the ground up. I have witnessed my family members bury children and husbands, and then watched in awe as they gathered around the Thanksgiving turkey, trimmed the Christmas tree, made tentative plans for the New Year. I have seen people fall down and get right back up again, and then again, and then again. The way I see it, it’s not for me to figure out why people keep finding reasons to believe. It’s for me to follow suit.

***

I stopped obsessing a while back over whether or not I should be marking Christmas or Hanukah. I started celebrating instead, with the intensity of a true revival, the Religion of People. I lie here prostrate to the brave survivors all around me and I do my best to learn from what they teach, whether they know they’re teaching or not.

That 92-year-old stranger may believe he’s lost his faith, but the fact that he was standing there after everything was, to me, a pretty powerful argument otherwise. And maybe it would have seemed a better story, a sure six-figure deal with the Hallmark Channel, if he had preached that day of his own unwavering belief. But this isn’t TV. In real life bad things happen every day and they can crush your faith, but if you are still standing at the end of the day then you are a person of hope.

Look at him, still standing. Look at you. Look at me, still standing, still pushing forward, still loving the guts out of my family over these holiday meals, still reaching out to you all with these words. Hope lives here, whether I invite it in or not. Hope is my kid taking my face between her hot warm hands and smashing my cheeks up so before I know it I’m grinning. Faith is hard work, but hope is so much easier. If faith is what we work so hard to give, hope is that reward we all get in return.

And I’ll take it.

***

Maggie Dammit is a writer, one of those real writers that the rest of us as readers get to soak up and wonder how she’s able to spin such magic with her words. She writes a personal blog, Okay, Fine, Dammit and is the creator of Violence UnSilenced, a blog devoted to supporting survivors of abuse.   Don’t miss any of Maggie’s beautifully crafted posts, subscribe to Okay, Fine, Dammit, and follow her on Twitter.

***

Loads of Hope for the Holidays

Please join us at Blog Nosh Magazine as we share stories of hope this holiday season in support of the Tide Loads of Hope program, a mobile laundromat offering laundry services to families affected by disasters.

Share your own stories of hope, along with Blog Nosh Magazine, Velveteen Mind, and a gathering of inspiring bloggers, and enter your own post link in the blog carnival below.  Explore featured bloggers as well as three featured posts selected from carnival participants listed in the linky (that could be you!).

Lend your voices now, then participate live during a two day event in New Orleans, Sunday and Monday, December 13 and 14, as we tweet stories of resilience from laundry recipients and volunteers on the ground.  Follow along on twitter via #loadsofhope and be sure to follow @TideLoadsofHope.

Learn more about how you can extend hope to families affected by disasters by visiting http://tideloadsofhope.com

Blog carnival hosted by Blog Nosh Magazine, sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope.

How do the holidays fill you with loads of hope?