alone – Erin Ulerich

We Are Not Alone in Our Battles

Jesus became one of us and was tempted in every way we are tempted. He fought the same battles waging inside of us and won. Not to gloat over us, but to say, “I know the battle. Come closer and find your strength in Me. Come and receive forgiveness. Take My hand and I will fill you with hope. Come to the throne of grace in your time of need, with confidence, to find help.”

Jesus is with us, so we are not alone. He gives us power to fight temptation, so we can say no to sin. He offers forgiveness when we fail and gives us strength to get back up on our feet and walk beside Him.

– Excerpt from In Unexpected Ways: Christmas in Everyday Life

Fighting For Hope Through Waves of Grief

Missing Robert

Grief is a tricky beast. It hides and makes you think you’ve “dealt”, you’ve “moved on”, and then it hits out of nowhere like a tsunami on a sunny day.

We don’t talk about him very much, but we miss him.

I miss the way he said “Well, hello there!” when he called around this time each year to get ideas for the kids’ Christmas presents.

Over the past 2 years, there have been plenty of What ifs, plenty of What could have been done conversations, but the bottom line is that while he didn’t he make the choice to die from his drug use, he made the decision to use drugs.

He made the decision to refuse help. “No program is going to help me,” he said, and that is when I knew he had decided to stop fighting for hope.

It was a decision that defied logic. He had been clean for years, so many years that my children only knew the fun Uncle Robert.

The Uncle Robert who helped them catch fireflies in the summer and who shot a zillion fireworks with them on New Year’s Eve.

It was a decision that led down a dark path, a path filled with cover-ups, half truths, and out right lies.

It was a decision that robbed us of our brother, friend, uncle, and son.

It was also a decision borne out of a daily battle to stay on the right path, a million unseen, un-applauded decisions made over the years of being sober. A battle he fought on his own.

He didn’t have to fight alone. We, his family, would have loved to celebrate victories with him. We would have loved to applaud his successes.

But we didn’t see the burden he carried until it was too late.

By the time we saw, his mind had already been turned upside down. By then, he had bought the lie that our words of hope and encouragement hid ulterior motives and that his drug dealer friends were the only ones who could be trusted.

Isn’t that the biggest twist of irony?

The people cooking the poison that killed him had convinced him that he was no longer alone because they had rescued him when no one else would.

The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That is the game plan he followed with Robert, and the story he seeks to write for all of us through all kinds of addictions. If our enemy can keep our focus on numbing the pain in our life, he keeps our focus off of living the life we were meant to live.

Life that gives hope, that looks forward to the future, that believes that change is possible.

So many of Robert’s years were marked by his struggle, but that struggle was not who he was. He was self-less to a fault, fun to be around, and he loved his kids. That’s the legacy I choose to remember.

At the same time, I can’t ignore his last months and days. They are filled with somber warning. They remind me that when I listen to the lies of the dark, when I give in to my own struggles and try to numb out, I am one decision away from stepping on the same path that stole him from us.

Beautiful Redemption

It’s the end of December as I’m typing this which means that we survived the holiday craziness (whoot! whoot!) and things have come to a screeching halt in those grey days between Christmas and the new year.

Sometimes those quiet grey days are peaceful, but sometimes they feel empty and words of hope are especially needed.

One more whisper of truth from the Christmas carols we’ve been singing all month.

A weary world rejoices because there can now be Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.

The answer to our weariness, rushing in on us on these grey days, is found in reconciliation.

Reconciliation means to bring before the face of God. We are reconciled out of love, for intimacy and communion with God. We are reconciled to do what our hearts were created for- connection, belonging, love, worship.

Reconciliation flows from God’s heart and makes His heart’s desire possible. Throughout the Old Testament He stated over and over “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” And our salvation through Jesus is so that we can, one day, come before Him face-to-face.

I love the concept of reconciliation because it changed the way I relate to Jesus. Throughout my life I pieced together a picture that Jesus was a reluctant Savior. That He came to earth and died on the cross because He had to. That He came out of cold duty and obedience.

And that impression was so, so wrong.

The Bible paints a picture not of a reluctant Savior but of a God who fully rescues, who delivers by any means, to bring His people into relationship with Himself.

The greatest rescue mission ever leads to reconciliation with God, which results in redemption.

And this redemption is not just an in-the-future-once-you-get-to-Heaven event. His redemption changes our lives right here, right now.

Redemption is the way He takes back the enemy’s claim on His beloved people and His beautiful world.

God redeems – buys back, rescues from loss – situations and circumstances in our lives. Because of the power of God’s redemption we can stand firm and yell at the darkness in our lives God turned into good what you meant for evil.

This powerful redemption is the fuel for our fight for hope. We can push back against the darkness because we believe that God will bring good where darkness wanted to bring evil.

I honestly don’t know how He does it, but I’ve seen Him do it. I’ve seen Him weave stronger marriages through things that should have destroyed those marriages. I’ve seen Him take brokenness and fill the gaps with Himself to make a person more whole than they’ve would have been otherwise.

There’s no way to track it with a chart or trace it with our finger, but God works in the chaos and brings beauty.

“Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” Psalm 77:19

God’s actions are not limited. They are not bound by the expectations of others or by the rules of this world. He doesn’t look at our lives and see hopeless situations because no one and no situation is beyond His reach.

Things in our lives do not have to stay where they are right now at this moment because God is a God who fully rescues, at all costs, buys back, and restores.

This is the beauty of redemption.

This sounds great, you may be saying, but it doesn’t feel true.

I get it. I often feel a gap between what God says is true and my feelings.

So what do we do with that gap?

We can be honest with God about the gap. We can pour out our hearts before Him. He can handle our honesty.

We can run toward truth. We can fill the gap with a steady intake of truth. Strength can come through struggle and our faith can grow through times of wrestling in this gap, but only if we run toward truth.

We can ask God to bridge the gap. We can ask Him to do what only He can do: Help us see His hand and believe His words.

When I run toward truth I run to what God says about Himself in the Bible. I want the pictures I piece together about God to be based on His Words and not on the words of others.

I’ve found a list of questions that help me apply the truth of God’s Words to my life. These questions have helped me run toward truth when I am sitting in the dark.

I’ve created a guide using those questions in hopes that it will help you see Jesus in a closer way too. I’ve included an example from my own study and a blank page for you to use.

applying scripture to life

Thank you so much for following this December series. I have enjoyed the comments and conversations that took place during this time together. This has been a gift to me, an anchor during the busy holiday season. It has reminded me that the difference Jesus makes is one that reaches from this broken world into eternity.

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This post is part of my December series, “What Difference Does Jesus Make?” Please join me on my writer’s Facebook page, Erin Ulerich, on Wednesdays for more truth about fighting for hope. I’ll be live at 6:00 a.m. CST, but the video will be available to watch whenever you can.

I am giving away this spunky little mug through a drawing. To be the lucky recipient of this mug, all you have to do is comment on the Wednesday videos in December. Let me know what you found encouraging or challenging during the video. Each week that you comment I will put your name in the drawing. The drawing will take place on Wednesday, January 3, during my 6:00 AM Facebook Live. The good news is that you don’t have to be awake to win.

Fighting for Hope When Things Don’t Make Sense

When the kids were little they would often say, “Mama, tell me a story!”

I would begin, “Once upon a time there were three little pigs. One built his house out of LEGOs, one built his house out of candy…”

“That’s not the way the story goes!” The kids would giggle. Or, if they weren’t in silly moods, they would cross their arms and grouch. “No! Tell it right.”

It was fun to mix up the stories. But these day I feel like I am in a story that isn’t going the way I think it should.

As I look through the Bible, I see that I’m not alone. God has always had a way of doing unexpected things. He often chose the smallest, the weakest, the most unusual way.

He promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation when Abraham and Sarah were too old to even have children. And then had them wait for years before Isaac was born.

He put David, the young shepherd boy, against the giant Goliath holding only a sling and a few stones.

I love reading these accounts in the Bible. I love the way God shows His power through these situations. But living out these types of stories in the year 2017 is another matter altogether. When the events are happening In real time it’s harder to trace the hand of God through the shadowy twists and turns.

In the midst of these shadows my heart whispers, “This isn’t the way the story goes, is it, God?”

And in the midst of my confusion, even as I’m questioning God, I am looking in the right direction.

When I don’t understand what God is doing, I can lean toward Him and ask. And I have. In the dark of night, in the light of day, I have asked question after question.

I’m sure you have, too.

I fully believe God can handle our asking, our ranting, our anger. I’ve found that when I seek Him, He answers gently, not through direct answers to my questions, but in revealing more about Himself.

These times make me ask Do I really know God? Do I know Him for who He says He is or do I know the version I’ve made up?

Because in these confusing times, the version we make up isn’t going to stand. These confusing times cause us to question God, to really look at Him, maybe for the first time.

He knows we don’t really need because statements to match our whys. We need Him.

Knowing God leads to trust. The more we know Him, and the more we know His tender love for us, the more we can trust His Hand in our lives.

And as I fix my gaze on who He is and who I am to Him, I find that I can trust Him with the unknown. I find that I can say, “I don’t know why this is happening, but I do know You. And I will trust what You are doing.” I can cling to his promise of His steadfast love and plentiful redemption.

Because at the heart of God, is this:

For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:19-20, ESV)

At the heart of God, the driving force behind His actions is to reconcile, to restore. To bring His people before His face. He works in and through the brokenness of this world to bring about wholeness in Him. Through the grief, through the tragedy, we can track His heart.

What does this matter? How does it connect with fighting for hope?

My measure of God is the measure of my hope. If I believe God is small, powerless, unable to save – my hope will be, at best, based on my current mood.

But if I see His majesty and power, in Scripture and in my life, my hope will be an anchor that keeps me steady in spite of mood or circumstance.

Hope that anchors reminds us of His promises. Hope that anchors reminds us of His character. Hope that anchors reminds us who we are to Him. This hope gives us strength to continue fighting, even when things don’t make sense.

When There Is No Script: Recap

Coffee by Jennifer Pendleton at Bricks, French Camp, MS

I would love to sit down with you as you read this. I would love to visit over a leisurely cup of coffee and hear about the parts of your life that have no script. The parts that leave you feeling helpless and hopeless. The parts that make you say, “What am I supposed to do now?”

I would tell you about the situations in my life where I’ve slammed into brick walls, hurt, confused and wishing I had a script to follow, a map out of the darkness, a way to stop the pain.

As the steam rises from our coffee cups, we can remind each other that the brokenness of this world will knock on our front door, no matter how much protection we think we have wrapped around our life. There’s no bubble wrap for life.

And that is where the fight for hope begins. Because when there is no script, we get to write our own lines. We become Hope Warriors. And we just may find the badass hiding inside us as well.

When There Is No Script has been about finding our footing in the darkness, asking questions about the journey, and meeting brave Hope Warriors along the way. We’ve looked at questions like:

Why fight for hope?

What is hope?

What does fighting for hope look like?

What is a hope warrior?

What is brokenness?

Sprinkled among these posts, I’ve had the honor of sharing stories of Hope Warriors – people who have decided that the struggle will not define them, and the darkness will not win.

Heather Hollander wrote about the reality of having hope when the world is filled with suffering and tragedy in her post Do The Next Thing.

Tara Dickson shared about her fight for hope in the midst of losing her husband to brain cancer in Beauty in Sorrow.

Becky Spies shared how God beautifully redeemed the broken and hurting places in her life.

Linsey Ewing wrote a courageous post about becoming a Hope Warrior and her journey with Bipolar Disorder.

Tammy Gonzalez shared a piece of her story that reminds us of the power of words – the negative ones we speak to ourselves and the life-giving ones we receive from others.

Natalie Ogbourne wrote about her fight for hope in the midst of discouragement and despair in Standing Against the Waves.

These stories are so important. It took great courage for these ladies to write about their fight for hope and it gives courage to us, the readers of their stories. Because even if our struggles don’t look the same, our needs are the same. We need to know that we will see the beauty of redemption and that the fight will have been worth it.

The darkness doesn’t last, but the strength that comes from fighting does.

Keep fighting for hope, my friend.

You are worth it.

When Lies Seek to Ruin Us

I cry whenever my children perform in talent shows. I can’t help it. I am so proud of them. It takes courage to perform on stage and I want to encourage my children to be brave. This world needs brave people.

But when my son wanted to dance in a talent show, I wavered. After all, I know the gene pool he comes from and there aren’t many dance-y genes in there.

What will the other kids say? I thought. What if he gets laughed at?

He persisted, undaunted by my wavering, and he danced to Axel F (my ’80’s heart was proud) and the crowd clapped and cheered and laughed in the places where they were supposed to. He loved it, and he experienced the thrill of trying something new.

And I cried as he danced. I cried because I was proud, but I also cried because my fears almost kept him from having this experience.

In a recent talent show, a spunky 10-year-old girl ~~played the drums~~ ROCKED the house on the drums. She definitely had talent, but even more, she enjoyed every second of playing those drums. She didn’t perform, she radiated.

And I cried while she played. An ache swelled in my heart as questions filled my mind. When did I stop finding joy in the things I’m good at? When did I get so insecure, afraid to try new things, afraid what others would think?

I can trace this fear back to lies I’ve believed over the years. Lies like I’m not good enough, my efforts won’t make a difference, it’s better to keep things the way they are, that change isn’t worth the effort.

These are lies I believed for far too long.

I hate lies. I hate they way they paralyze us, they way they eat into our souls, they way they cripple and maim.

I hate the lies that curl around my daughter’s heart, trying to take root, whispering in her ear, You are a nobody. You are useless. You are helpless.

I hate the lies my husband hears, You are a failure. You will never change.

There is no end to the lies we hear. You don’t deserve good things, You don’t matter, What you think doesn’t matter, You can’t make a difference.

Lies are powerful and if left in the dark they will take root and grow stronger until we eventually accept them as truth.

So what can we do? If we focus on the lie, even to argue against it, it grows stronger. The way to fight the lies is to change the playing field and focus on truth. As truth seeps into our hearts, the lies lose their power over us.

The truth really can set us free.

For years three major lies controlled my life. These lies were just under the surface of my heart, influencing the way I viewed myself, the way I viewed God, and the way I believed God viewed me.

I found freedom as I listened to truth. As I began believing truth I found the freedom to begin living bravely, courageously, and honestly. Instead of being paralyzed by fear, my heart grew strong enough to begin fighting for hope. And in the midst of this journey I scribbled my thoughts on paper. These thoughts became a 31 day series called Truths That Make Life Beautiful, because that is exactly what they did.

These truths changed me. You are loved. You are not alone. You have purpose.

When we feel unloved, alone, or useless, life is dark and filled with struggle. When we believe lies, beauty is hard to find. But truth has a way of bringing fresh air as it chases away the darkness.

Truths That Make Life Beautiful

You are loved. You are not alone. You have purpose.

Silencing Shame By Fighting For Hope

My family loves watching American Ninja Warrior. My ten year old, Maggie, is on a first name basis with her favorites. I love the determination, the skill, and the strength of the competitors.

But most of all, I love their stories.

Flip Rodriguez, a competitor from Miami, Florida shared a part of his story and revealed a strength far greater than required for the obstacle course. He took off his mask, literally and figuratively. He brought a secret out into the light. He told the world that he had been sexually abused from the ages of 9-15. In a few short minutes he shared an extremely difficult piece of his story and then reached out to others caught in the same situation.

Before the show aired, he wrote on Instagram, “My story will finally come out to the world. One of the hardest things/ nervous times of my life. To let everyone into my world and what I’ve been through. In hopes of helping others that are going through it. To show you that you’re not alone in it. Just cause you’re in a situation doesn’t mean you have to stay there.”

He pushed through the shame, and in doing so, he lessened the shame others may feel about speaking up.

Shame is a fungus . It flourishes in the dark, covering us with its lies. Shame separates us from God by convincing us that though God’s love is real, it isn’t meant for us. Shame works overtime to make sure we feel alone, and that we stay alone. Eventually it convinces us that we are alone.

Brene Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love and belonging. She says “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

And Flip Rodriguez stared shame in the eye when we wrote “Just because you are in a situation doesn’t mean you have to stay there.”

He is fighting for hope and, by opening up about his past, he is reaching his hand across the gap to help others step out of the darkness of abuse.

His words on America Ninja Warrior were powerful. He communicated truth: This is not your fault. You are not alone. He offered empathy and understanding. and shame cannot survive where empathy and compassion are offered. Brene Brown explains it this way:

“If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs 3 ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, judgement. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”

It can’t survive. Empathy and understanding bring our shame out of the darkness and into the light – where hope can grow.

People are amazing. The way they fight for hope, even when things look and feel hopeless. I believe people do that because we are wired for hope. We were made for hope because we were created by the God of hope. This God of hope who takes the broken and messy and says to the darkness What you mean for evil, I will use for good. And that is the war cry of the Hope Warrior.

Hope warriors are not people who have it all together. They are not people who give surface answers to the messiness of life. Hope warriors are people who know their own brokenness, who aren’t afraid of the brokenness they see in others. They are people who say “I am with you. You are not alone.”

Whether or not he wins America Ninja Warrior competition, Flip Rodriquez is definitely a Hope Warrior.

Our world needs Hope Warriors. Our world needs people who cling to the beauty of redemption, because there is so much that is broken.

We Were Made For Truth

We say what we think. We live what we believe.

If we believed what God says about us, it would change the way we live.

We Were Made For Intimacy

We were created to know and be known by God. We were also created to know and be known by others.

Our hearts crave this.

And yet it is terrifying to open ourselves up to be known or to really know another person. We were created for intimacy, and yet intimacy is difficult. We are broken people in a very broken world.

Everyone struggles with feelings of alienation and isolation, whether or not we were raised with loads of siblings and very attentive parents…Sin has wrought devastation and isolation in all our lives. Our experience of sin, our own and other’s against us, has brought separation and alienation to all of us. This separation and alienation originates in our broken relationship with God and flows our from there into broken relationships with one another and even with the created world. No matter how popular we might be, none of us have ever experienced deep unity or authentic union with another. Since the day that our forefather and mother were exiled out of the garden of Eden, we’ve been lost, trying to get back in, trying to find oneness with each other and the Lord, trying to find communion, our way home. We’ve been trying to be found. – Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Found In Him

My friend, Sara Littlejohn, wrote Maybe We Were Meant To Limp: How to Address Brokenness and I wanted to share it with you today. The way toward authentic relationships, where we are really known, is to lean in through the brokenness.

I’d love to know your thoughts about limping, brokenness, and being known.

We Can Trust Him, Because of Who He Is

Life is hard to figure out.

In a session at a recent writing conference, Kaylan Adair, editor at Candlewick Press, spoke on middle grade novels.She defined them as stories where the characters stick their foot into the adult world for the first time. They are on an exploratory mission and don’t plan to stay. In these stories, the character discovers that life is complex and complicated.

There are days when I wish I lived in the chapter before the beginning of a middle grade novel – where life is easy to understand.

In reality, we live in the midst of layers of life, where things are happening simultaneously around us, to us, and by us, while we try to make sense of it all. We tend to default to a formula where our life experiences shape our definition of who God is and whether or not He loves us.

Good things happening=God is good and happy with us. Bad things happening= God is bad, weak, or mad at us.

This formula looks simple and easy to follow. But life can’t be lived through a formula. Life is complex and complicated, a mix of joy and sorrow at any given moment.

God is constant and unchanging, and life around us swirls in chaos.

Instead of letting our life experiences shape our definition of who God is and whether or not He loves us, what would it look like if we let who God is and His love for us shape our definition of our life experiences? It’s more than playing around with words. The difference between these two is the difference between hope and despair. I’ve experienced it in my own life.

When I was in 8th grade my grandfather died of a heart attack. I had a vague notion of who God was but I had no idea that He was with me or that He loved me. I felt alone and my grief was dark and hopeless. That same year a friend from school committed suicide. Again, I swam in dark and hopeless grief.

Years later my grandmother passed away after a horrendous struggle with cancer. At this point I had a closer relationship with God. I struggled with her suffering. I pleaded with God to take away her pain. I yelled at God and wrestled with the complex truth that He loved her and He was allowing her to suffer. But it was not dark and hopeless because who God is was my filter. My grandmother was his precious child. He loved her even more than I did. He was getting her heart and soul ready to spend eternity with Him and He would not let her suffer one second longer than necessary to accomplish that.

If I had interpreted who God is through this difficult circumstance, the logical conclusion would have been that God was either helpless or too cruel to alleviate her pain. However, the truth is that God’s greatest desire for my grandmother was for her to know Him and He loved her enough to do whatever was necessary to accomplish that purpose.

What made the difference in these two reactions?

Trust.

I filtered my sorrow, my anger, my frustration through the filter of who God is. I searched His Word to find out about His steadfast love, His faithfulness, His being with His people. And I clung to who He is as we walked through this battlefield of cancer.

The more I know Him, the more I trust His steady, constant Hand in the midst of the constantly changing circumstances swirling around me.

If your eyes are on the storm
You’ll wonder if I love you still
But if your eyes are on the cross
You’ll know I always have and I always will – Casting Crowns, Just Be Held