15 Mar 2021
Keep Choosing Hope
“I had allowed my desire to become my hope. I think we often confuse the two when, in reality, they are very different. Desire is what a person wants. But a desire’s strength is inconsistent; it rises and falls with human emotion. Biblical hope is the confident trust that God will fulfill His promises. Biblical hope is steeped in grace. The strength of biblical hope rests on the faithfulness of God Himself. Through His grace, we are blessed with miracles whether we deserve them or not. Doesn’t that just give you chills in the best way? None of us are owed a thing by God, but He pours His grace out to us anyway, blessing richly and fully. How lucky are we?
Still, despite knowing all of that, we continually place our hope in all the wrong things. Even the best of things—doctors, jobs, relationships, our kids, love—aren’t God. And when we place our hope in temporary things that can never completely or indefinitely satisfy, we will always be disappointed.
The sad part of this story is that I knew better. I knew where my hope should be. I knew that hoping in the wrong places led to heartbreak. But I got lazy. And I got busy. I allowed the busyness of raising my boys, being a coach’s wife, and running a business to be an excuse not to be faithful in my walk with the Lord. My quiet times rarely happened, but I had all the excuses, of course. And when I did spend time with God, those times were filled with so much distraction. Once again, I was living on borrowed faith. I was using the best doctor at the best clinic, and our embryo had a good quality score. Check, check, check. I checked the boxes off in my head and mapped out the plan for how it all would go. My plan. Not His plan. I wanted to have a third baby around the time when the boys would turn three. I liked that age gap. I wanted to deliver in early summer, so Blake would be home more to help me. We made all these decisions around what worked best for us without even asking God what He wanted for our story. We took back the reins and were writing the story of how we wanted it to go. Our hope was not in Jesus. Our misplaced hope was staked firmly in our plan.
So afterward, then the transfer failed and I wrestled over my numb heart, I began to pray and cry out to God. Why this same heartbreak again? I’ll never forget the moment when I stared at my miracle twins, and I felt this truth so clearly placed on my heart. I couldn’t stop thinking, They were not my plan. Over and over that phrase went through my head. My plan was to have our first baby seven years ago. My plan was not IVF. My plan was to get pregnant the first time we tried. They were not my plan. They were His plan. Every part of my boys’ lives was not my plan. I never wanted twins. I didn’t want to give birth in August as Blake and my mom started back to school. God’s plan was hard. But as I sat there on that couch snuggled up to the cutest miracles I’ve ever seen, none of that hard stuff felt heavy anymore. Why? Because God got me through it all. As I hugged my babies and tears fell down my face, the fog lifted and took the numbness with it.
In that quiet and sweet, still moment, God reminded me in the most gentle way that these tiny little faces I get to look at every single day were never part of my plan. But they were always part of His plan. If I had to do it all again, I’d choose His plan every time. How had I forgotten this? I beat myself up over this for a while. But no matter how long you’ve been walking with God, you can get distracted and forget the lessons you worked so hard to learn. When you aren’t faithful in the little things, your heart becomes more susceptible to the lies, and you start placing your hope in things that will never satisfy. I cannot place my hope in my plans. I must seek Him, walk with Him, trust Him, and allow Him to direct my path. I have to place my hopes in the One who never disappoints and is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Luckily, God’s grace has us covered. He wi
