Hope Archives - Trisha Mugo

I wasn’t coincidence I booked the grungiest hotel room in North Dallas. I’m pretty sure the Sovereign God pre-planned the metaphor.

I entered a broken, near suicidal woman and penned the following in my journal.

My heart looks like this shabby hotel room.

Peeling wallpaper. Water-stained ceiling. Roach in the toilet. Curtains as old as me. Pictures one step up from clown art. Only the TV looks like it belongs in this decade. It’s in desperate need of a remodel—just like I am.

I pour my life out and ask God to remake it. Will His Spirit hover over my chaos and confusion, like He once hovered over the depths? With my last bit of faith, I ask Him to remake me and create in me something beautiful.

I ask God to part the sea of anxiety I have been swimming in for months. My mind longs for silence, and I hope for death if only to quiet my anxious thoughts.

I can see myself pull the trigger. I imagine blood soaking the pillows and sheets, flowing along the seams of the mattress. I will wrap my head in a trash bag to stem the mess of blood. Will the bag be much help against a bullet?

Where do I place the gun? At my temple or the roof of my mouth?

When I entered that hotel room, I had forgotten God’s goodness. Fear bullied me. Bitterness and self-pity kept me company day and night.

In the bedside table lay a Gideon Bible. I lifted it out of the drawer and turned toward Psalms. The Psalms of lament were the only Scripture I could stomach. The first passage I read sparked hope.

“The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the LORD: ‘O LORD, I pray, deliver my soul!’ Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; our God is merciful” (Psalm 116:3-5 ESV).

The verse hit me like a life preserver strikes a panicked, drowning woman, and I clung to the hope. I willed myself to believe in God’s grace and mercy.

I began to pray that God would remodel me. I didn’t want to live a bitter, angry life. I didn’t want to just plaster a smile on my face at church. I wanted to live from a wellspring of joy.

Right on top of the quilted bedspread, I repented and asked for God to remake me. But how does God remodel our lives?

He usually starts with truth from his Word. When I let that truth seep into my heart, the remodel process began. Like a sledgehammer, it knocked down a structure of lies I had let the enemy construct.

God had to do more demolition work in my heart, but the work He started in that shabby room, he would complete. Not only that, he would lead me to healing through meditating on his Word.

Like balm on cracked lips, his Word infuses healing into our lives. “He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction” (Psalm 107:20 ESV).

I didn’t see a way out and I couldn’t envision hope, but he came and whispered truth to me.

That’s why I can confidently tell you God can lift you out of your pit, whatever your situation. It doesn’t matter if you dug the pit yourself. God can and will rescue you if you’ll let him.

Whether you war against anxiety, depression or another form of lies, Jesus is the door to peace. He is Hope itself.

The reason the Son of God put on flesh and stepped into time, happens to be you and me. The Doctor came to relieve the sick.

If your life is in need of a remodel, don’t settle for anything less than the remaking love of God.

Photo by Harriet Moar-Smith via Creative Commons

“Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psalm 139:12 NIV).

I’m always at my worst when facing grieving people. I usually dash in the other direction after I fail to find something meaningful to say.

So, instead of talking I pray. Since my last post about losing our baby, I find myself sorting through stories of grieving families. My story of daring God to show me 1,000 ways He turned around the tragedy touched some people.

And what I heard back touched me.

I spent the first part of Thanksgiving morning weeping for a guy named Thomas that I will probably never meet. After losing a 5-month old baby two years ago, he still feels the sting.

Today my heart is heavy for Kristi whose baby was born sleeping at 39 weeks.

If you follow my blog you know I, too, am walking through a bit of darkness now. That’s why remembering my college humanities course—and what I learned about dark spaces on a canvas brings me so much comfort.

In this class I became obsessed with Chiaroscuro art.

I studied painters like Caravaggio and George de La Tour and went through a Noir film stage. But it was the paintings I loved best.

I relished the contrast between light and darkness. I loved the way shadows gave way to light. The highlighted scenes seemed to jump right off the dim backdrop.

Painting by de la Tour via Creative Commons

At length I studied these works and always focused my eyes on the light.

In this season where God is painting dark hues on the canvas of my life, I’m trying to remember the purpose of darkness. Our dark moments serve as a backdrop for the glory of God.

How else would we know God’s magnificence if we had nothing to compare it to? Earlier this week, I penned these words in my journal.

In our darkness, we have an opportunity to see the light, to gaze at it. We have an opportunity to keep step with the Prince of Light when we, ourselves, cannot see. Darkness, too, is a gift in that sense.

How beautiful of God to use light to describe Himself. He created light in the beginning. With only a word he commanded light to be.

He created the world in darkness. When it was formless and void and darkness hung over the deep waters, it was there where God hovered over the surface, right there within the darkness (Gen 1: 1-2).

In the midst of His creating in us, sometimes darkness remains. Sometimes God’s spirit in us must dwell in seeming darkness, but God always comes and says, “Let there be light.”

May God be your light today in the middle of your darkness.

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.” ― Og Mandino

How God Remodels a Shabby Heart

When Darkness Dims Your View of God