When I started counseling at Hope, I knew I would once again be focusing on all my pain and suffering. Over the last few years the fabric of my family began to fray and unravel. I was already dealing with addiction, separation, financial ruin, and the loss of a close companion to cancer (to name a few things) when COVID hit. A great discouragement over took me. My eldest son returned home from college shut down, our relationship tattered and torn. I had to then face the fear that I may lose him too.

I had attended a conference in Chapel hill a few years earlier sponsored by Hope Counseling Services. I reached out to Hope, even though my previous counseling experiences did not give me much confidence that more counseling would be helpful.

But this counseling has been so different. I found sincere compassion and a genuine desire to team with me and share the burden, and lovingly confront lies that I believed and sin that snared me. Hope has reoriented me to a right view of myself before God. Wes helped me see God’s greater good even in the midst of my tragic story. More importantly, I’m learning to trust God being with me in the hard places and what it truly means to lament. To cry out to God doesn’t mean to complain but to be honest with him about our losses. Wes has taught me to not stop there but to look for Gods promises.

Hope Counseling Services has been a gift from God, helping me see my story isn’t over yet. I have a long path to travel but Hope has shown me where to find that path and when I go up and down as I do, I have learned to say:

I know O Lord , that your laws are righteous and in faithfulness you have afflicted me. May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. Let your compassion come to me that I may Live for your law is a delight to me. Ps 119:75-77

I am learning how God enables me to respond in ways that honor him, even though I have been greatly sinned against. I’m learning fresh new connections I would never have learned had God not faithfully brought this to me. In those difficult moments I’m learning to cry out to God in honest, faith-filled prayer and trust.

I am eternally grateful for the godly men and women that bring Hope to Life through this ministry, and continue to walk with not only me but others during these perilous days we are living in.