Bubbling Up...

I felt it bubble up

as I sat at the restaurant Sunday night talking to two great friends...

it was subtle at first, I didn't even notice it...

but then it just popped up into my consciousness...

HOPE!

I felt hope and excitement and not dread of the future for the first time in months.

It felt great!

May the God of hope
fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him,
so that you may overflow with hope
by the power of the Holy Spirit.
- Romans 15:13

I love that God is not only a God of love and joy and peace, but that He's also a God of HOPE...

Merriam-Webster defines hope in these ways:
: to cherish a desire with anticipation <hopes for a promotion>
: to desire with expectation of obtainment
: to expect with confidence : trust

To me hope isn't about anything changing in my circumstances - it's akin to faith, which Hebrews 11:1 defines as "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see". Hope is an attitude of my heart - a belief that God has good things in store for me.

I knew these facts in my head, but Sunday night the truths reached my heart.

Finally!

Thank you Lord!

Error message

I've been having problems with my computer lately - it won't shut down - keep getting this message "Unable to launch restart.exe".... as I sat at my desk closing the 20 instances of this error that had popped up and tried to coax my exhausted computer into shutting down I looked again at the error message and wondered if the message wasn't meant for me...

I feel stuck.. I feel like I'm unable to launch restart.. I am struggling with "starting over" - with creating or picking up my life again as a "single"... yes, I've always been single, but for about 18 glorious months I was part of a couple.... it was fun wondering what "we" we going to to next weekend.. where "we" were going to spend the holidays.. we went ring shopping (his idea!), we worked on projects to get each of our homes ready to sell, looked at open houses and talked about timing of when to get married, etc. I think that's why I was so stunned/blindsided when I learned that the man I was planning a future with was planning his future without me. I didn't see it coming. In fact, on that fateful day 10 weeks ago I thought he was going to propose... he suggested we go to a beautiful estate/garden, and as we sat on a bench overlooking a meadow on a bright October Sunday afternoon I thought for the first time that he was going to propose - and I was so happy because I was having a good hair day, and I recalled that I had my camera in my purse so I could take pictures - I was happy that it was such a beautiful day and if I couldn't get married on the last weekend of October then getting engaged on that weekend was the next best thing... needless to say things didn't work out as I had hoped...

So I'm finding the transition from "we" to "me" much harder than I thought it'd be. I keep saying to myself ok, it's been awhile, I should be over this by now... but I'm not...

To fix my computer I have ordered additional memory... not sure that's gonna work to fix my heart...