Hope

"Soooo when are you going to update your blog? I'm sure Caleb is as lost without it as I am — with Caleb Holt."

I was greeted by Sarah's message on my facebook this morning.  It made me smile and then sigh.  I seem to have reached a point in my life where so much of my concerns, worries....well LIFE cannot be brought here.  That's saying a whole lot too, because many of you have watched me rant and rave about a whole host of issues that probably should not have come here either.

Times change.  Issues change. 

I sat by Andrea Millers sweet chubby Hank last night.  Life is so "right" for so many people. People who have no idea they are even "in the zone" (as Seth would say). They're just living life and doing their best... Hank is happy and sweet and content and so well loved....life if it was fair would have all babies that way!!  Wouldn't that be nice?

Sadly, life is not fair.  Some things are a blessing, a sweetness of fate, a gift!!  Life is just that. One of the things on my heart so heavy is Rosie.....Life has not been fair to her.  Of course she is loved!  Below was her at nearly two.  A year and a half after we brought her home.  But the first few months of life is HUGE....ask anyone who adopted a child.  We got Rosie at 5 months. She weighed 9 pounds.  To anyone looking a sweet Hank who is half that age and nearly twice that size you would understand....starving, physically and emotionally is profound.  It is at any age, but when we are helpless I think it is greater.

I'm a chooser....we have choices in life.  We should all be able to choose...to  ascertain what is right and what is wrong regardless of our "life".  But, frankly, I can truly say that and I have never known "want".  I have never been starving.  Oh, much like my kids who always think they are "starving" I've had moments where I wanted a friend, or time to myself, or help....but never was it "true" need.  It was situational:)  I never wondered if I was loved.  I never worried about acceptance. I think it was my very foundation that allows me to transcend this life....to understand that if every person on this earth hated me, God wouldn't.  To know that what other people say does not matter, what I know about myself does.  I really believe that my beginning directly impacts my end.

If that were the cause and affect, if that were "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey so often said, we would live in a doomed society.  How grateful I am for that four letter word I do not use enough....HOPE. 

As I know where Rosie it today, I still have HOPE for her tomorrows.  As I watch my goofy kids, I still have HOPE for their tomorrows.  It is HOPE that fuels my soul on every single level! 

I have let 10 long days pass without blogging.  I often find my hope is like  a small seed that's lost.  This week Sara Walker, a young mother I have followed for years died of cancer.  Life's unfair. A sweet college student who worked with our kids on their mission trip this summer died.  She found out in college she had Leukemia, fought it and was in remission and headed back to college this fall.  On a routine Doctors visit with her mom they pricked her finger for blood and she bleed to death in the Doctors office.  Life is NOT fair!!  My girls dear friend Charla, who is, along with her husband, working in the mission field of Peru, found that her sweet 2 year old Gabbi has liver cancer. Life IS NOT FAIR!!! 

And then, there is hope, sometimes it is simply whispered but still there!  Last night Sarah shared that the mother of sweet Emma White is expecting.  She said "God and Emma sent it" to her, a year to the month after Emma died.  Hope.....it's there.  Life, while not fair, is still here.....

The hardest part of Hope is that it always seems tested. As though it cant just "be" it must race through fire.

I am reminded of Hope in it's fullest by Sara Walkers sister as she blogged these words....

Sara always wanted her legacy to state that cancer DID NOT WIN!

So, I close with this:

Sara WON her battle! She has received her eternal reward! She is now in the hands of the Great Physician and He has restored her to full health and given her a heavenly body that cannot be harmed. Praise the Lord for his faithfulness and for answering our prayers.
God is Good!

  ~~Dinah

Isn't THAT the HOPE....that regardless the fire, HOPE is eternal!!