What Faith and Hope mean to me

I love my God so much. I walk with Him and feel His presence each and every day. It has been amazing to see His plan for our family unfolding through the years. We have been through a lot in our 13 years of marriage. We went through years of infertility and miscarriage. We went through Chris’s life threatening illness. And through all this we have grown closer to God and seen him working in our lives because of what we have faced. Wow! God’s plan has been amazing!

If I had to choose one word to describe those years of infertility we went through, I would say “HOPE”. That is what got us through that difficult time in our lives. As we encountered loss and treatment after treatment we clung to hope and knew God had a plan for us. His plan was Chase. We always held onto this hope and knew God heard the desires of our heart. Romans 5:5

Years and years…and years ago when I feel God first placed the idea of adoption in my heart I had no idea of the journey that would take place. If I had to choose one word to describe this part of our journey I would say “FAITH”. This word is so important to me and it is God’s challenge to all of us…to have faith and believe in what he will do for us! Chris and I belong to a community group at our church. We meet on Thursday night’s and each Thursday we discuss a different Bible story of Jesus. This past year we talked a lot about faith. I will never forget what a wonderful man from our group said (Ron Tate if you are reading this…). Ron said that faith is an action word. It requires something of us. I love thinking of faith like that! This adoption has required us to use faith as an action word and to trust in God with all our heart and to know he had a plan that would eventually reveal itself to us. We had to have faith when others said why? We had to have faith when the unknown of an adoption seemed overwhelming. We had to have faith when people said maybe you shouldn’t. We had to have faith when we let doubt creep in and say what if? We had to have faith in God in ALL the details…and we did. And look at our reward!

While I was in the Marshall Islands I also wrote a lot in my private journal. One of the things I wrote a lot about was this faith. I truly had faith in God’s plan and that faith gave me such overwhelming peace! I will never forget sitting out on my balcony at our hotel. My Bible in one hand and my journal in the other. The sweat would be streaming down my face as I sat out on that hot balcony reading my Bible and writing in my journal. I read Hebrews 11 over and over and over. What an amazing chapter! The faith that so many had before me makes my faith pale in comparison. But that chapter gave me strength. I would sit on the worn out chair looking out at the palm trees knowing I was held in God’s hands. Whatever worry I had, be it documents held up in Hawaii or Chris and Chase leaving, was given up to God.

Sometimes faith can be a difficult word to understand and even harder to put into action. But throughout the challenges in my life I have had the wonderful opportunity to do just that. I have learned what faith is and I have put it into practice. It has made me grow closer to God and allowed me to see the miracles He is capable of. I cannot wait to see what He has planned for me next…