I am a firm believe in happy endings as I think I have already eluded to in an earlier post. Last night a few of us gathered for the Capital One Bowl where my Hawks took on LSU. All through the game I had such hope for my Hawks to win. When Phil would say "Oh, this doesn't look good." I would promptly look at him and say "But these are my Hawks, they'll make it." In the last two minutes of the game, LSU pulled ahead with a touchdown. It didn't look good for the Hawks and I think everyone in our living room was giving up hope on my Hawks...everyone but me that is. I always hold out for the last possible hope. I am stubborn like that. I looked at them all and said "These are my Hawkeyes, they can SOOO pull it off in 56 seconds if they want to." Well, for those of you who watched the game or at least checked out the scores of this game know that they desperately wanted to pull it off...and they did. They scored a touchdown in the last 10 seconds of the game, actually, the clock ran out of time as they were running down the field. It was the most incredible game I have seen in some time (granted, I haven't watched my Hawks play in the 1.5 years I've been here).

I think that I am a firm believer in happy endings because Jesus made me this way. I mean, if you think about it, Jesus is a firm believer in happy endings, too. I mean, God wrote the Book and told us the ending. I think its so we wouldn't lose hope amidst all the battles that we lose from day to day...it is to bring us encouragement and push us onwards to look at the final ending, where we win and Satan loses. My Jesus loves happy endings. Right now I am in a place where I don't know if this chapter in my life is going to end happily. I stepped out in faith in something and I do not yet know how it is going to go. I have suspicions, but know nothing for certain. This week brought a verse to me. It comes from I Corinthians 15:57 and it talks about how we have the victory through Jesus Christ. As I have also eluded to, I have been struggling with something huge over the last 6 months. That something is ugly and I have tried over and over to escape it. But this week, Jesus showed me that indeed what I have been missing out on is the fact that HE brings us victory. I have been living a life of defeat for 6 months. But Jesus offers a life of victory. I know how I want this chapter in my life to turn out, but it is so far out of my hands...to think it might not end up the way I had hoped breaks my heart all over again. I always hold out hope...many times very foolishly. But its something that I have always done. Myabe it goes with childlike faith, maybe it goes with sheer foolishness. If I look at my track record of the last 6 months, I know that this chapter is not going to end how I had hoped. But yet I cling to the hope that I felt God gave me more than a year ago now. Foolish? Proabably. But that's me. And if it doesn't work out, then I guess that's when I will have to fight again to claim yet another victory. I just long for the day when either I won't be so exhausted from fighting these battles or when I no longer have to fight them.

Please pray for me. God has renewed my hope and my strength this week in a way that I have longed for for 6 months. He has given me victory. But I feel another crushing blow will send me right back to where I was. If that is the case, please pray that I will have the strength to just stand. I just want to be able to stand this time. Jesus is all we need. And He shows us that so clearly when He is all we have. Why put our hope in anything other than Him? Its just not worth it. I long for the happy ending, but realize that we are not promised happy endings until the final end....but we are promised to always have Jesus with us. And that is enough.