Hope Deferred makes the Heart Sick

 Proverbs 13:12 "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but dreams fulfilled is the tree of life."
    There is nothing more discouraging than making plans, having dreams and goals that you set out to achieve to only have them fall apart, or crumble, right before your eyes. So many times I have set out to do what I thought God was calling me to, or just wanting to follow my heart, and not just to be told No, but to have what seemed to me, the whole world and all of creation, along with God, shut those doors.  I remember all to often curling up in the fetal position just crying my eyes out. Not just because one set back, or two, and not just for a month or two, but for YEARS.. Wondering if I was ever going to do anything that I wanted to do.   In those Dark times, Oswald Chambers called them "the Dark night of the Soul", we lose ourselves. In these times we find despair a closer friend than joy. We find hopelessness covering our nakedness, more than the clothes we wear. We long to be clothed with something more. We wish for light to break thru to us, because we can't crack the shell that envelopes us and keeps us in the darkness. We wonder, as Ken Gire writes, "I don't know who I'm fighting anymore, God or Satan, but I know who lost... I surrender."
  Ken later on in Windows to the Soul, goes on to say, "This is how we grow: by being defeated decisively by constantly great things." 
   I am constantly being defeated.. 
2 Corinthians 4 : 

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.11For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

  So, why am I defeated? Why do I feel crushed?  I know that in my brokenness I can speak to the broken. I know that in my defeat, the Life of Christ can be manifested. It is for the sake of those around me that I am being defeated by greater things. It is from the pit that I can look up and say, "Where does my help come from? My Help comes from the Lord." Psalms 121. and I can say to my soul, "Why are you cast down, O My soul and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall Again praise him, my salvation and my God."
  So know that in the darkness, God is still light, and night is as bright as day. That these momentary afflictions are for but a moment, to produce that which God is desiring, and to reach those whom He is trying to help. He is so arraying your life not to fit you, but Him.  Romans 15:13 "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in Hope." "And Hope does not disappoint for the Love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit." "And this hope we have as a sure Anchor to our souls, Firm and Secure."