How I Know There is Hope

I rifled through my desk drawer this morning and happened upon a small pink notebook of our daughter’s from a decade ago. Like a stash of love letters from a first heart break, I knew it was there and had avoided it numerous times before. Flipping the tiny pages, I was transported to another time and place. Her handwriting was hard to read but I deciphered a few verses about our family: The Henson 4.

It is impossible to convey the way The Spirit seeps into the broken places expansively like foam insulation. I struggle to express how and why God holds us in our devastation and leads us forth with joy. In that leading despite the unfamiliar terrain God holds my hand in tenderness.

As much as I have longed to be a faithful steward of her memory I feel in the air around me so much more than I could personally conjure, even in a thousand lifetimes. I am surrounded by an atmosphere of redemption, thick with the scandalous aura of hope.

This other-worldly joy penetrates my backward glancing tendencies like a laser burning up the fog. This presence of God not only informs my story but engulfs it, right-sizing my greatest triumphs and bitterest griefs in the swallowing.

Maggie Lee for Good, a day of kindness on our child’s birthday, October 29th, has been the spot that a dance partner tells you to focus on as you spin so that your balance is kept. As the frenetic gyration of heartache has mellowed, MLFG remains a miraculous reminder that nothing lost in Christ is ever truly gone.

The very capacity of a human soul to translate trauma into benevolence is a spiritual phenomenon. I consider Shannon at M.D. Anderson delivering encouragement and snacks in the very same clinic where she received treatment for a brain tumor. What is it within her to love that creative degree? That active love like ants in her pants which demands expression.

Brian Pearson one of the Alabama National Guardsman wrote these words just last week:

“I only met Maggie Lee for a sort time on the side off the Interstate at the Alabama Mississippi line . About 2 minutes after the bus accident. I held her hand and prayed with her until the helicopter came to take her to the hospital. In that short time she changed my life. So this weekend we have raised money to buy 57 radios for the patients at the Tuscaloosa VA hospital. That have ask for them to listen to music and ball games. Maggie lee for good is going strong in Alabama”

– Brian K Pearson

#maggieleeforgood

Brian has taken trauma and distilled it into love for other veterans. And that is pretty phenomenal moonshine. I know that there is hope because I have seen good spring up like flowers through the sidewalk. I know that there is hope as long as we have air in our lungs. And it hinges not upon our brilliance, faith or status. Only God.

If you would like to join The World-wide wave of goodness, join up at http://www.maggieleeforgood.org or simply do a kind deed on October 29th

#God’s grace

#Jesus

#hope

#grief

#maggieleeforgood

#AlabamaNationalGuard

#payitdorward

#preciousloveofGod