Hope at the End of Your Rope-013 by GGSS Podcast published on 2022-09-06T10:15:16Z “At the end of your rope” can be a very scary place to be. However, it can also be a place of hope and peace and growth. Let’s talk about that. THANKSGIVING TRADITION It was Thanksgiving time and we were getting ready to have the whole family over at our house. Most of them live in the Twin Cities, 12 total. This is something that we do every year. I don’t know what food your family likes to serve at your Thanksgiving celebration, but several years ago we decided to do something a little different for ours. We decided to do a Thanksgiving breakfast. So we would lay out a traditional southern breakfast spread for everybody just to give them something a little different rather than having to eat two big turkey dinners in one day. We would have scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, grits, biscuits and gravy and cantaloupe. It’s something that everybody looks forward to and spending time together is obviously a wonderful thing. INTERRUPTED But the virus that shall not be named had other plans for me and Cindy. A week before Thanksgiving, Cindy came down with symptoms and that changed all of our Thanksgiving plans. Cindy and I had it all figured out ahead of time what we would do if one of us got sick. We were going to mask, glove up and stay in separate parts of the house. Well…that plan only lasted about two minutes. Cindy got pretty sick pretty quick. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in South Florida that I was going to leave her in a different part of the house in the condition she was in. So I was in full nurse mode if you will. I was attempting to be careful around her but at the same time to be fully attending to her, setting alarms throughout the night to check for fever and monitor her oxygen levels. One evening, she was especially in a bad way. She was in her recliner next to mine covered up under six blankets and she was still having mad chills. I had never seen her this sick before. I couldn’t take my eyes off her and 40 years of marriage went through my mind. Forty glorious, sometimes very difficult, years. We’ve been through so much together. EMOTION EXPRESSED THROUGH SONG It was right around that time that I started writing some words to the song, Have You Ever Felt. You think of David in the Psalms and how he would hit emotional points in his life and he would write the psalms or songs that ended up being psalms. You could hear his heart through these readings. I kind of felt like that. And I just poured my heart out as I wrote. The first verse says: Have you ever felt, the weight of the world on your shoulders Have you ever felt, the days just seem to get colder The nighttime seems longer, you don’t feel any stronger There’s only one way out This was November and certainly the days were getting colder and the darkness was longer than the daylight at this particular point so there were some natural occurrences happening. But the nights were very long for me as I was trying to sleep but concerned about Cindy and setting alarms and taking temperatures and giving medication and then trying to go back to sleep which was very difficult. But I needed to sleep because I needed to be attentive in the daytime. END OF MY ROPE I really was at the end of my rope and crying out to God knowing that He was my only way out. He was Cindy’s way out in this particular moment also. I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say that I thought Cindy was going to die because I didn’t, but I wondered if she needed more than I could give her at this particular point. We knew of a few people praying for us but decided to go ahead and send a prayer request to our Friendship Church family through the website. Within a few hours of sending that prayer request, Cindy started to improve. Sensing the power of prayer and experiencing the love and kindness of friends lifted us in an amazing way and we were able to press on. So here’s the chorus: I know where my help comes from I know who puts breath in these...