<p style="text-align: center;"><em>“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”</em></p>
<p align="center"><em>-Proverbs 13:12</em></p>
Sometimes at night, after my husband is heavy with sleep, and the girls in their cribs are turned just so—Ariel on her side; Eva on her belly—I sit alone on the couch, in the dark, and wait for the waking presence of my God.

He is the revelatory God, the One who speaks to me holy secrets, who ushers me forward into territory I’ve dreamed about but have never entered.

He says it’s time.

Sometimes in the dark, while I’m on the couch, I tell Him the power is too much; His presence is overwhelming.

He reminds me of where I had been—mangled, lonely, beaten down, cast aside. He tells me I am no longer in the hands of men, but engraved upon the palm of the God who breathed forth the universe with a sigh of relief.

In Him all things move and breathe and have their being.

Still I tremble. I tell Him if I let it all go to Him—everything I’ve lost; all that I’ve found—I may not be prepared for the hurt.

While in a circle of women who lay hands on me and pray, who prophesy words from my God in the dark, they remind me that when I gave everything over to Him in 2010, the week before I learned my marriage may be over, it was God’s fullness in me that remained. Without it, I would have experienced the same circumstances, empty.

God asks us to give Him everything so when we have nothing left, we are still full.

Now, in the dark, on nights when everyone but me is heavy with sleep, God appears and asks me to come with Him.

I tell Him I’m afraid of my dreams coming true. I run through the dark into my bedroom and wrap my arms around my husband, the one whom God restored and returned. My husband opens his eyes and smiles. He kisses me as he journeys back into sleep, and I am left in the dark again, waiting with my God.

My circle of women reassure with bold gestures and wide smiles that God is waiting to fulfill something in me; He is not here to hurt me.

My wounds would have happened anyway, they say, but with God, they were overcome.

My fists no longer force closed before the throne of the living God.

Late last night, with morning close on the horizon, I lay awake next to my husband who was heavy with sleep. I sat up with arms extended to a Heaven that no longer shrinks me.

<em>Here I am, Lord. Send me.</em>

Instead of the earthquake, the tearing of a veil that has already been removed, the peace of God rested upon me. It was heavy with meaning, with purpose that will come as I keep my hands lifted, as I walk beside my husband, as I carry my daughters, as I prophesy over circles of women.

There in the dark, in the quiet heavy of night, hope slumbered no more.

[This post is part of the <a href="http://provoketive.com/2012/01/18/synchroblog-on-hope/">Synchroblog on Hope</a>.  For a full list of participants and posts, <a href="http://provoketive.com/2012/01/18/synchroblog-on-hope/">go here</a>.]