When we lived in Tennessee the winters were much milder than the midwestern ones I grew up with. Sometimes this felt like a strange gift to live in a place where the wind didn’t bite your cheeks the moment you stepped outside. And sometimes it felt kind of disorienting for this Nebraska girl. The seasons were missing some of their punch.
Each year I would be surprised the first time I saw the tips of daffodils poking out of the ground. The start of spring happened earlier in Tennessee than I was used to and even with the mild winters, it always seemed like the daffodils came up before the last snow of the year had fallen. It makes for a beautiful picture to see the green tips of new life bursting through the hard dirt and cold snow. I probably should have been more excited about the promise of warmer weather and the mountains in bloom.
But I wasn’t.
I was mad.
I wasn’t ready to have hope that winter was over. Every year I would see those plants poking up through the ground and I would yell at them. “You dumb plants! What is the matter with you? Don’t you know it’s still winter? Don’t you know you’re going to freeze to death? Stay in the ground where you belong until it’s warm enough!”
Turns out, I hate hope.
- All photos by Rebecca Tredway Photography
But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.
-Micah 7:7
I had a beautiful childhood where hopes were often fulfilled. God smiled on us because we did what he wanted (or so I thought). My life was mostly painless. Adulthood has not been so kind to me.
Infertility rocked my world and my faith in God. Every 28 days brought a fresh reminder that hope hurts and not hoping at least made the pain a little easier. Then there were the positive pregnancy tests. Hope seemed reasonable until a doctor sent me down for emergency surgery to remove the baby stuck in my fallopian tube. Cautious hope followed me through the adoption process until the phone call that informed me the little boys who so “needed” us were actually returning to a mother who now had the resources to care for them and we weren’t needed any longer.
There have been many other moments in my life where hope has been painful. The diagnosis that used words like “treatable, but not curable”, the marital issues that bubbled back up when I thought they were handled, conflicts with friends I thought understood me, the twists and turns of the court system in our foster parenting process, and a thousand other situations where my ideal and the real do not match up.
Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face.
-Job 13:15
. . . to finish reading, click over to Her View From Home. . .