Tag: Tammy Gonzalez

When There Is No Script: Recap

IMG_4702
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.

On Extractions and the Rich Power of Words

I want to welcome Tammy Gonzalez to the blog today. I love the way her story reminds us of the power of words – the negative ones we speak to ourselves and the life-giving ones we receive from others. Tammy is a fellow Hope*Writer. Be sure to connect with IMG_1405her in the links below.

 

These days, I tend to wonder about a lot of things.

In part, this is due to my age and stage in life.

In part, it’s due to experiences of this past year.

And in part it comes, quite simply, from the pervasive hopelessness that seems to overtake me more often than not.

Caught in waves of questions, guilt, and self-condemnation, I wonder if I’ll ever get past this, if I’ll ever be able to embrace grace and move forward, and if I’ll ever really and truly be able to offer something of value to those around me. I’ve been frozen, unable to concentrate well. And all too often I’ve hidden myself in games of Spider Solitaire rather than allow my mind to explore the rough and ragged areas of life that I’m trying to avoid.

But at least—and this is huge—I can now read again.

For a while, it was all I could do to take in a short blogpost. Finally, though, words penned by authors as diverse as Henri Nouwen and Shauna Niequist have begun to make their way into my soul, resonating with some of my deeper places and helping me to see beyond the desolation that has seemed intent on consuming me these past several months.

And believe it or not, an infected tooth was the catalyst for this step forward.

I had been trying to run—from myself, my thoughts, my reality. Then came last Friday, when after weeks of discomfort a problematic molar finally had to be yanked out, and with it came a significant amount of infection that had been hidden between the roots.

The extraction was actually somewhat painful. An hour’s worth of attempts to anesthetize the area had met with only partial success. So by the time I arrived home, I was feeling just a bit sorry for myself, and eventually a few tears gave way to a waterfall and I was pouring out my lament to God, finally confessing my frustrations, my regrets, my heart that was breaking from words spoken to me and by me, a heart breaking from my own failures and the failures of others. Literally and figuratively, it was a watershed moment.

But that moment was just the beginning. The entire weekend was punctuated by times of tears as I dealt more directly and more humbly with my regrets of the past months and even the past years. God kept at me, relentlessly yet beautifully: a conversation with my dear friend Lisa about laying it all out before God and trusting Him to cleanse, heal and forgive; a night of live worship, soul-stirring music and prayer led Chris Tomlin, Matt Redmond, Max Lucado and others at The Forum. Many rich words, many bittersweet tears.

Through it all, there was a sense that God was moving, that the infection that had been pervading my soul was being slowly extracted, not as quickly as the infection that had been yanked out with the tooth, but it was being extracted nonetheless.

And it didn’t stop there. I encountered Henri Nouwen’s book The Way of the Heart and was blown away by what I found there:

The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition, one restless effort to convince ourselves of our virtuousness…

The encounter with Christ does not take place before, after, or beyond the struggle with our false self and its demons. No, it is precisely in the midst of this struggle that our Lord comes to us…

Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature.

This is a journey. In reality, it’s a journey I’ve been on for quite some time. I’ve taken a number of detours, and I’ve circled the same area more than once. But it feels so good to once again take in the richness of the written word, to delight in Niequist’s essays on life, friendship and food, to be touched to the core by Nouwen’s wise, insightful counsel that seems meant just for me.

Words. Words of life, words of hope, words spoken by friends, words penned by strangers and set tomusic or placed in print.

Words all used by God.

I’m taking them in again—in part due to an infected tooth—and I am so immensely grateful.

Tammy Gonzalez is a wife, mom to three kids (one of whom is already in heaven), and a teacher to the homebound in Southern California. One of her greatest delights is seeing how God fits together the details of our lives in awe-inspiring ways–through random conversations or the voice of nature, through world events or ordinary moments, through heights of joy or depths of despair. 
You can connect with Tammy at her blog, Seeking What’s of Worth, or on Facebook