Hurting To Hope

Last year I was hurting. Ok, Jerry, the truth is you were hurting very bad.

Debbie was going through chemo, Jean was looking for a job and I was facing unemployment. A year later, Debbie is in remission, Jean has two job offers and I am enjoying my full-time job from home. Such is life. As Debbie lay in bed, for 4 days in a row after chemo, I would hold her hand and cling to hope. Slowly, I would get cynical. WHY ME? I am hurting. I need help.

Being a caretaker for nearly two years to someone going through cancer was emotionally, mentally, financially, and psychologically challenging. I had to make it through. Life still had to be lived and the bills had to be paid.

I was hurting. However, it was the unconditional love, support, charity, service, and compassion of countless friends, family, and neighbors that helped me pull through.

How are you dealing with Covid? Hang in there we will make it through. I am an emotional wreck. I am weak mentally, physically, spiritually, and psychologically. YET! I made it through. I honestly felt like someone was carrying me through the whole ordeal. I was hurting and I knew it. I got help. I took care of myself.

Pastor Natalie has come to realize that we must take pauses or we are just experiencing life passing us by quickly! Every day there are several moments we can perhaps all talk about and be an encouragement to someone else. I talk to Pastor Natalie about some of the very issues I faced last year and she answered with grace, love, compassion, and empathy. If you are hurting, this interview provides you with some of the answers.

Natalie, welcome. Tell me something important and unique about you? 

Hello Jerry, thank you for this opportunity. There are a few things I can say that is unique to me. First, I was born and raised in New York and currently live in Central Florida. I have a great passion for bringing encouragement to others. I have had the honor of helping others in my community and worldwide virtually. It is important to me that I have left an encouraging print everywhere I go and the things I do.

As a writer, I have a blog where I bring every day encouraging moments to my readers. I believe there are several moments taking place in our lives and we must pause and take moments to enjoy and reflect on daily.

Currently, I also co-pastor alongside my husband overseeing operations at a non-profit organization called, Resplendency. We have been able especially during these trying times to support our local health care heroes, work with another organization to bring food to families in need and just bring support and encouragement to as many as we could. I have had the honor of hosting annual Women’s Conferences both in-person and online. I also have been honored to have several opportunities to be a guest speaker and writer.

In 2020, I was facing unemployment, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and a trip I was looking forward to got canceled. However, I clung to hope. Talk to me about hope. What is it? Why should we cling to it? 

Jerry, first I want to say that I am very sorry that you and your wife have had to face some serious times of testing. Disappointments and overwhelming moments in life can bring discouragement but I am so happy that you clung to hope. Hope brings an acceptance of what is happening. It provides an expectant end.

Hope carries a sense that things will change. It brings assurance that ‘it will not always be this way.’ Clinging to hope is so important because without it you can live in despair and dread. Without hope, you will deal with so many emotions that can bombard you that you can become overwhelmed with no sense of a future. 

In clinging to hope, cynicism can creep in. How can we keep cynicism from creeping into our life? 

You are so correct you can become cynical without hope. There is something about turning your heart toward hope that sustains you in ways of change that can take place at any moment. As I said earlier, without hope there is a sense things can never get better. Despair and hopelessness can take hold of our hearts. With that said, to avoid becoming cynical it’s important to pause and reflect where you are and take in what you know to be true and what you see as possibilities ahead that can bring about change.  You may need to talk to someone and be honest about your feelings and be open to their voice in your life.

With that said, I believe that it is in these moments it’s vital to turn our hearts toward God and not away from Him. You learn to live by faith when you live in hope. With hope, there is this sense that, ‘I can go beyond what I see.’ It is a great time to open your heart to God.

Talk to me about a time in your life where you were facing challenges and how did you overcome them? 

For me, this is honestly a loaded question because unfortunately there are several challenges I have had to face over the years that I had to overcome physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, and spiritually. It was during these times where I faced the fact that I either both believed God was real and trusted His plans and purposes through it all or I did not. One particular moment that stands out to me that I will share will be when I was facing a serious illness and had to have surgery. I believed that I would be healed and would not need surgery and yet God had other plans. I had to have the surgery and it was very trying to know I had to walk through this because I know nothing is too hard for God. What I learned is that when we pray for anything and everything, we must remember, “NOT our will, but God’s WILL be done.” I have come to the place with an assurance in my heart that, ‘Father God knows best’ and I can trust Him to bring me all the way through it. I came close to death as a result of this illness and had to walk through very trying moments but I did not lose hope, rather I gained a deeper sense of assurance of how close God really is to each of us and never leaves us alone. On my let’s take a moment blog I recently began writing about my health journey.

Are hope and optimism the same? Why? 

I believe they can be viewed as similar. However, hope in my opinion stems from a place of faith (a reliance upon something bigger outside of ourselves). It is an assurance and confidence that comes because you make the choice to believe in God. Where optimism is more of an outlook that brings hope. To me, a negative mindset will not experience either hope or optimism. To that person, it will seem like nothing can change and everything is always horrible.

In your opinion what does the world need in 2021? Walk me through what it is and how we can use it to make a difference in other people’s lives? 

This is a heavy question and I believe the world needs hope in 2021. There are so many uncertainties with all that each of us has had to face that without hope there really does not seem like anything can change. I see it as everything has been ‘shaken up. This is a great time to reflect on life and make some important decisions first spiritually, then everything else. It is an important time to pay attention to where our hearts are. There needs to be true repentance and forgiveness. There needs to be honesty and continued discussions about where we are and how we can move forward in the right changes. This must include everyone. I see it as a great time to reset your heart, mind, soul, and spirit before God.

I want to know how motherhood and marriage have changed you? 

I believe I have learned how important it is to remain humble and dependent on God in my relationship with my husband and with my children. My marriage would not have lasted if we both did not learn the importance of honesty, humility, and understanding.  To me, the most important for us both is communication with one another. I have learned the importance of denying yourself for others on a whole new level both as a wife and mother. As a mother, I have learned how important it is to pay attention to each child you have and recognize their individuality. It has taught me to be even more understanding and genuinely loving.

What does love your neighbor mean? Why is it so important right now? 

We are living in a world where “It’s ALL about me!” No one else matters. But to love your neighbor genuinely is of the utmost importance right now. You cannot say you want to change in your life and the world around you if you do not even know how to love others. You really cannot even talk about loving God with all your heart, if you do not know how to love others who are different than yourself. Thinking of more than ourselves and doing for others without the intention of what you can get in return, to me, means ‘loving your neighbor.’

As I get older I realize accepting my brokenness, forgiveness, and having compassion for other people has really helped me keep cynicism away. Please comment? 

People will let you down, disappoint you, and even cause serious pain. It really is up to us how we respond. You are right the older you get; you get to a place where you recognize that these things will happen but you do NOT have to allow it to make you something you are not. It is important to choose to forgive even when not asked for forgiveness and make an important choice NOT to keep a record of wrongs. Unforgiveness locks us up. So be intentional to forgive quickly so that you will avoid becoming cynical. 

Help me understand what men can do to make the lives of women in our lives better? 

I can honestly share a lot on this topic but I will try to say just a few things. One is to be attentive to their needs. Women are constantly communicating in a variety of ways, not only in speech but in action. So, pay attention. Another would be to make her feel safe in your presence. This again stems from paying attention to her feelings and the environment. Sometimes, your perspective can be very different from hers so pay attention to body language as much as verbal queues. Don’t feel you always have to respond; be a really good listener. Remember to make sure she knows she is being heard, not by just ‘yessing’ her but answering as you are talking about any topic.

Many people in my audience are hurting. Give them hope?

I want to first say that I am very sorry about all those hurting right now in your audience.  I want to encourage you that without hope there feels like nothing can ever change. I would say you can have hope right now. Things can turn around. Change is possible. I would invite you to pray with me and ask Jesus to come into your life, your heart, your situation right now. Gain a peace that passes natural understanding and begin to rest in all that He can do for you as you put your trust in Him. Let him show you where you need healing and forgiveness and allow Him to do so. It is a gift that we can come to Him just the way we are and we can gain hope because of all that He did on the cross for us.

I would love the opportunity to pray for anyone who would want prayer. I honestly know that God brings hope where there is despair. He brings purpose to our hearts and reassurance that things can change.