I have
Received a Giving Key
With the word
HOPE
My Story
I was in a very dark place, when my friend in recovery gave me a hope giving key. The day she gave it to me, she said it was for me to move forward into my next season.
Little did I know, that when she gave me her hope key, she was literally giving her hope away. Sadly, less than a week later, my friend relapsed, and she died of a drug overdose. When I attended her funeral, her parents gasped when they saw the key around my neck. They had given it to her as a gift for Christmas.
I told them how she gave it to me, and they were glad that she had passed it on, but the bitterness of the reality of her loss remained. I felt a lot of guilt for years that she died and I got to live. I never took the key off, and clung to the message that I too, would be able to have hope. It took time, years, endless pain and persistence, but it did come.
I remember the day I was talking to my brother, and he bore his soul to me about his hopelessness and despair. I recognized that was me when my friend gave me her key years ago. And that as I sat there in front of him in tears, that I not only had hope, but that hope had become part of me. I was then able to gift he key to my brother, who still now wears it, clinging to the same promise that one day he will find that hope and be able to live from that place.
About a year later, I was recently gifted a new key by surprise. This one is called "Arise". It couldn't be truer to the journey I am on now, and what God has been doing in my life. It started with the gift of hope that a dear friend died to give me, and continues with the journey of arising into a new life I never dreamt was possible.
Rachel
