Hope | Sarah Ellen Edwards

Hope

I don’t know about you, reader, but in general for this blogger, life is hard.  

You may be nodding in agreement.  You may be rolling your eyes thinking, “Oh, great.  Another depressing post about the state of our world and culture and economy and blah blah blah.”  

Nope.  I mean my actual life is hard.  Yours too maybe [or probably].  My life is definitely hard.  I am not trying to win an award or even your sympathy, but I just like to tell it like it is.  

When did it become hard? Honestly, for me, childhood and early adulthood and even marriage were delightful.  Until children entered the picture.  Actually before they entered the picture.  Trying to get them here was HARD.  We tried the conventional way and we saw some doctors who saw nothing preventing me from getting pregnant.  

Before all of this HARD, I had a fair amount of hope.  Nothing in my life had caused me to lose hope, nothing had tested me.  But then, I couldn’t get pregnant and for no reason at all.  It just wasn’t happening.  I began to lose hope. 
Hope in our future family.  
Hope in my ability to be a mother.
Hope in God’s goodness and faithfulness.

I knew God was not a genie in a lamp, there to make all my dreams come true.  I knew I didn’t deserve anything, but was this God telling me that I was not fit to be a mother?  Was this Him telling me no because He didn’t think I could do this?  I mean so many other women are mothers and God designed women for this, right?  So why wouldn’t I get to participate in this?

We ended up deciding to go the route of adoption.  If that gives you happy feelings and butterflies and makes you want to say something like “you are awesome” and “that child is blessed to be in your family,” I am going to stop you right there.  Adoption is hard.  Financially, emotionally, mentally HARD.  In a shocking turn of events, we had a baby in our arms only 9 months after starting the adoption process.  I can still remember that shocking feeling of them just letting us leave the adoption agency with a plump, dark-haired baby.  For real??  Well, okay!  

If you are thinking my hope was fully restored, it would actually take several years for me to realize that God didn’t desert me.  It was my hope that dwindled, not God.  He was there and He didn’t leave me to figure it out on my own.  

This time of year during Advent always brings me back to this place of yearning to hear from God.  I not only go back to this particular place in my life of feeling hopeless, but I remember the Israelites and I can only begin to feel how they felt leading up to Christ’s birth.  They had to be feeling deserted by God.  Maybe they were wondering if they had missed it and they were losing hope too.  

 But then.
Christ came and redeemed them and we are able to claim that redemption today too.  

Fast forward 11 years and that dark-haired, plump baby has been joined by 3 siblings.  I am a mother to four kids and spoiler alert, life is still hard.  Now, however, I am living these hard days full of hope because I know that God is faithful.  He has proven it to me in His word and He has proven it to me in my life.  

I can’t wish away your hard and bring back your hope, but I know that God is the source of all hope.  Romans 15:13 begins, “May the God of all hope.”  

He is hope.
He sent hope in the form of Jesus.
He left us hope in the form of Holy Spirit.  

During Advent, we can remind ourselves that He is the source of all hope and we can rest in that hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  -Romans 15:13

Sarah Ellen Edwards