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God, our Provider and Protector, is with us every moment . . . from the time storm clouds formulate until they dissipate. And what a priceless privilege it was to see authentic Christian hope birthed in Tyler’s life as he grabbed hold of his Anchor.
    Tyler’s hand on that gun was just like my foot on that accelerator all those years ago. Despair darkened our days; we held no hope that the sun would ever break through and shine joy, peace, and unconditional love upon our lives. Hopelessness is indeed the most serious of matters; it can drive desperate people to take desperate measures, pursuing a permanent solution in an effort to end overwhelming pain.
    But comprehending God’s love and faithfulness and recognizing that God has a plan for our lives, people like Tyler and me,
and per
haps you
, can move forward . . . healed by hope . . . held secure by our Anchor.

TRANSFORMATION AND AFFIRMATION
    You see, when I entrusted my life to Christ, everything began to change. Hope began to illuminate my life . . . almost imperceptibly at first, then breaking forth in irrepressible light.
    I wasn’t the first one to notice the newly dawned light in my soul. It was my friends at Colorado summer camp. The summer after I invited Christ into my life, I was sent off to camp . . . again. Once there, others told me they noticed something different about me, about my countenance, about my attitude.
    While I still wished to be elsewhere, unlike previous summers when I reluctantly and begrudgingly participated in activities, this summer I was present and I was engaged. But the strange thing about it was, I did not make a conscious decision to be different . . . I just was.
    Without my even realizing it, God was changing me not only on the inside but also on the outside. Had it not been for the encouraging comments directed toward me, I don’t think I would have even noticed something mysteriously wonderful happening to me.
    I was unaware of hope burrowing its way into my heart and lodging itself there, hope that was being evidenced by my newfound ability to find good in my once grim camping experiences. During previous summers I’d hiked the same steep, rocky switchback trails and fished from the same fresh mountain streams; I had shot bullets and arrows at targets, paddled canoes, and ridden horses. I had done all the things summer campers do in the Colorado mountains. Yet no one could tell on the outside that on the inside I was
alone, isolated,
emotionally disengaged
. I went through the motions, but it was always without emotions.

THE SWEET SIDE OF PAIN
    But now for the first time, not only was I more fully aware of the natural beauty of my surroundings, I was more acutely aware of a sensitivity to others’ pain that God was developing within me.
    An early manifestation of this was my reaching out to a fellow camper . . . a painfully shy loner like I had been. (I now see the sweet foreshadowing of God’s call on my life to bring His hope to the hopeless through the many avenues He has afforded me.)
    Clearly, the feeding I had been receiving from God’s Word since my conversion, through prayer and careful study, was beginning to produce fruit in me even without my awareness. It was a result of the spiritual hunger God created in me when He took up residence within me when I become a Christian.
    Back home I began literally living for Sundays, when I could sit at the feet of my fabulous Bible teacher at church and be fed spiritual food that slowly began to fill a deep, deep void in my life . . . a colossal chasm in my heart.
    The truths in God’s Word encouraged me to cling to the hope that even though I did not understand why God did not change my caustic father or our painful circumstances at home, I could trust Him to direct my path. During those early years with the Lord, I clung for dear life to Proverbs 3:5–6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him,