I Was Broken, Too: Four Paths to Restore Battered Hope

By Barbara Higby

How do we hold on to hope when problems mount and feelings numb?

Uninvited, invaders march into our lives--challenges, disappointments, loss. At times, these invaders creep in softly; often they blatantly barge in. Either way, the thieves break through our protective doors and wreak havoc. As we struggle to survive the onslaught, hope fades and we wonder if we will ever hope again.

This is where author Barbara Higby found herself when her daughter suddenly died. Previous losses had tutored her in how to renew hope--a failed adoption process, the death of newborn twins, the challenges of a disabled son, the collapse of her calling--but her daughter’s death plunged her to new a depth of hopelessness. Barbara’s story of bringing life to her shattered hope will encourage others who are disheartened by loss.

I Was Broken, Too offers four paths to restore hope in the battle-weary.

• H--Hold      your Eyes Higher
• O--Open      your Heart to God’s Opportunities
• P--Ponder      the Positive, not the Problems
• E--Expect      Grace

I Was Broken, Too was written for you, the broken, disillusioned, and wounded. If loss of any kind has assaulted your hope, follow the paths that revived Barbara’s--they are achievable, and hope is possible. You will discover that what God has done for her, He will do for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jul 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9780310107576

Barbara Higby

Barbara Higby’s passion is to encourage others, from a podium, one-on-one, and in her writing. She has widely served in women’s ministry and alongside her pastor husband, Rich. Barbara’s experience as a biological and adoptive mother of five, a mother-figure, foster mother, bereaved mother, and grandmother of eleven, has seasoned her ministry with compassion. Barbara claims dual citizenship—her feet walk the streets of New Jersey, but her home is Heaven, where three children precede her.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Who Doesn’t Want a Miracle?

N ana, you’re pretty nice for an old person. The ice cream scoop in my hand froze mid-air and I slowly turned to lock eyes with the nine-year-old. I didn’t speak but my expression must have said volumes because Noah immediately began to backtrack.

Pacing, hands fidgeting, he tried again, "It’s not that you’re old. It’s just that you’re―you know―you’re in between adult… and elderly."

I handed him the bowl. Eat your ice cream, Noah.

This is the same grandson who told me why he loves coming to Nana and PopPop’s house: It’s like the Garden of Eden—with marshmallows!

I may have marshmallows, but as an adult who has endured much (and is not yet elderly) I can assure you that I live in no Garden of Eden. The losses I’ve suffered would not be found in that sinless paradise and I’m sure the pain you have endured would not be there either.

If we sat together and shared stories, our specific circumstances would differ but we would find our struggle for hope to be the same. Disappointment, offense, and pain have marched into our lives—uninvited invaders. They vandalized our joy and devastated our hope. At times they crept in softly, but often they blatantly barged their way in. However they entered, they broke through our protective doors and wreaked havoc. The despair that accompanied them caused hope to falter and eventually fade, leaving us to wonder if we will ever recover.

Fading hope is like fading light—it darkens our surroundings. We don’t choose to go to this dark place, but neither do we choose to not go. Life’s assaults weaken us and, in our diminished state, they carry us to places where fear threatens and vision dims. In the midst of the darkness we can’t see a way out and the prominence of our problems obscures the hand of God. It’s a shadowy, murky place to live. I believe this is where the widow of Zarephath lived when Elijah found her.¹

At one time, love flooded her heart and her infant son’s smile all but overwhelmed her. There were no bounds to the happiness she and her husband shared. Indeed, they felt honored to be blessed with a son. As they watched their child grow, each stage of development thrilled them with fresh wonder.

Her maternal heart beat with unquenchable joy, until the day it didn’t. Until the day her husband left her a widow. Until she found herself poor and defenseless. Until famine ravaged the land and she watched her precious son waste away. Until she had nothing but a handful of wheat and a little oil. Her joy was long gone by then. Hope had vanished. She shuddered at what she saw in her future―death by starvation for her and her son.

Perhaps that’s why, when the prophet came to town and asked her for a cake, she prepared it for him, using the flour and oil that was intended for her and her son’s last meal. What difference did one meal make when there was no hope for a next meal? Had she given up? Or, did she feel a reverence for the prophet’s God? Did the God she likely did not know instruct her heart to respond? During the preparation of that final meal, did the widow feel hope flicker?

She alone had been approached by Elijah. When he saw her gathering sticks for a fire, she was the one he asked for bread and water. She weakly explained that she didn’t have any bread and the sticks she was gathering were to cook a final meal for her and her son. Elijah’s next words must have sounded absurd. He said, Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of starvation? Don’t be afraid for tomorrow? Don’t be afraid of death? Lurking fear had usurped her hope, as it does ours, and the prophet exposed it with his simple statement.

Elijah continued, Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. Did he know how irrational that sounded? If she first made a cake for him, there would be nothing left to make another. But she did not have time to puzzle over the impossibility of his request because Elijah was still speaking.

He said, For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’

We do not know if her obedience was out of resignation or hope, we only know that she did as Elijah told her. I would love to read her thoughts. Could she have believed what he said? Was there reason to hope? There was nothing to lose when she was already one meal away from starvation. But she didn’t starve. Miraculously, there was food every day—for her, for her son and for Elijah. The jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry.

You and I understand personal famine. We have experienced decimated joy and shriveling hope. Who of us wouldn’t want to experience a miracle of that magnitude in the midst of our desperation?

Perhaps you, too, became a widow who was left to raise a family alone. Or you became a single parent through the pain of betrayal. Maybe you suffer the unnatural sequence of a parent outliving her child. Did your resources, like the widow’s, dry up and leave you unable to supply your own needs? It could be that you’ve been abandoned by a child, parent, spouse, or friend. Is