The inspiration and title for this book, Unrealized Hope, came from a sermon given by an executive pastor at my church in Colorado. He had been happily married and was looking forward to spending his senior years with his soulmate when, one day, his wife suffered a brain aneurysm and died instantly. It was the kind of shock that takes your breath away. No one could believe it, and the grief in that room was palpable. He spoke about the hopes and dreams he and his wife had held for their future, dreams that would now go unrealized. It was a moving sermon about finding God even in the most difficult of times, when a door suddenly closes, and you are thrust into a life you never expected.

I knew instantly that he was not alone. His story was one of profound loss—the loss of his wife and soulmate and the future they had imagined together. Yet even in that heartbreaking moment, I began to see how God can meet us in the places where our hopes have been shattered.

There are so many stories of adults living with their own unrealized hope: marriages that never happened, marriages that ended in divorce, dreams that had to be left behind, and the heartbreaking loss of a spouse and soulmate, as this pastor experienced. Each story is different, but the question is often the same: Where is God when the life we hoped for is no longer the life we are living?

Unrealized Hope is about those stories—and about discovering that even in our deepest disappointment, God has not left us alone. Sometimes hope is found not in getting back what we lost, but in discovering how God meets us right where we are.