What Hope Really Looks Like
(I am wrapping up the miscarriage series this week. But can I tell you, the next two posts, are dear to my heart and deal with topics interwoven into the Christian walk. If you've been avoiding the blog because miscarriage is not fun to read about, maybe don't avoid these ones.)
I was on the phone with my mom, pouring out the pain of the
past year.
“Mom, I just don’t know how to trust God. I don’t know how
to move forward. I want a baby. I really wanted that baby. And I am scared to try again because I just can’t lose
again. I really don’t think I can.”
“Amanda,” My mom pauses. Her voice shakes a little, like she
bracing herself for the weight of the words she’s about to speak. “If at some point I had stopped trying, there
would be no you. You are my promise fulfilled.”
{And then we both cried.}
My mom’s story, and my story really, begins like this. One
month shy of 19, my mom married my dad. At 20, she had a miscarriage. At 21,
she gave birth to her first son—Robby, after my dad. But the birthing room
didn’t erupt into joy or a gender announcement, but rather a hushed
panic—doctors and nurses clued into the knowledge that something was wrong rushing to identify it quickly. Robby was born with congenital heart disease.
His aorta hadn’t formed properly and his heart was full of holes. As soon as he was able, he underwent open
heart surgery and spent the first few months of his life in the hospital. He
was sent home for a month and then returned due to complications from the
surgery. At five months old, he was scheduled for a second open heart surgery.
The night before the surgery, my brother so wearied from months of fighting
couldn’t properly swallow the food he was given. He aspirated and died.
My mom has told me how after Robby’s death she felt like a
mother but she had no baby to mother. She was young and newly-married to my dad
who deals with grief much differently. She felt alone and empty and sad.
A while after Robby’s death, my mom tried to get pregnant
again. She had three miscarriages. If you ask her about it, she will tell you
she felt her life was doomed to sorrow, one after another after another.
Then she got pregnant—her sixth pregnancy. She didn’t
celebrate it, not even when the doctor declared her fine and the baby’s heartbeat
strong.
It wasn’t until hearing the vigorous cry of a newborn taking
her first breath, seeing skin a healthy shade of pink, and watching a room erupt
into joy, crying out “girl!,” that she let herself believe she was having a
baby for reals.
I was that baby… the happy miracle on a broken road full of
sorrow. The fulfillment of a promise
breathed quietly into the soul of a woman longing to be a momma.
It was five months
later that my mom knelt beside her bed and gave God her whole life.
If she would have declared the suffering too great, the pain of losing again too daunting, the fight simply not worth it…
I wouldn’t be here.
Neither would Andy, Kelly or Jono.
Neither would Addy, Jed, or Zion, or, God-willing, her
grandkids yet to come.
That’s kind of a sobering thought.
Hope is a rather weak word in the English language. I hope you do well. Here’s to hoping. Oh,
I hope so. It’s almost wishy-washy and covers nice ideas as well as
something our heart desperately yearns for.
But in the Hebrew language, hope is not a weak word. The
Hebrew language likes to attach something tangible and concrete to even lofty
ideas like hope.
I have been studying out hope in the Psalms. There are four
different words that get used interchangeably for the words that appear in our
translations as hope and wait. I want to look at two of those words.
The first is qavah. It means hope, but the picture that word
intends to give is of a person tying a rope around something, binding it up,
and holding on. It speaks of something active, something that requires
strength. It is anything but a weak word used to express a fleeting feeling. It
means believing to your very core, not giving up, holding on for dear life.
The other word is yachal. It means to remain, to stand in
one place and to wait.
Two completely different words all wrapped up in the Biblical
idea of hope. The Bible conveys this, and if you aren’t seeing it, let me just
say it out loud: Sometimes hope is the
absolute strongest and bravest thing you can do.
Hope is an anchor for your soul.
When you have found yourself unable to get pregnant for
years, and still you try. When you have had every single door slam in your face
for the job you know you were called to, and you apply one more time. When you’ve
been cheated on, manipulated, abused, and God lays a godly man or a godly
friend in front of you and you step into that relationship.
No one tells you about
the sheer audacity it can take to hope.
I want to leave off with this verse (and it reads so
powerfully when you read it in light of the original Hebrew).
“I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait ---> (wait=qavah-strength, bind myself to His promises)
And in His word to I hope ---> (hope=yachal-remain, stay in this one place)
My soul waits for the Lord ---> (waits=yachal)
more than watchmen for the morning."
Can I just take a moment to make sure you didn’t miss that
the place where it says yachal (to remain), is in His Word. Stand. Stand and
remain and don’t back down from what the word of God says. (<---and let’s
slap a period at the end of that sentence. Boom.)
Okay now check out what follows:
"O Israel, hope in the Lord ---> (hope=yachal)
For with the Lord there is lovingkindness,
And with Him is abundant redemption." ---> (redemption=peduwth-to divide, separate, liberate)
Psalm 130: 5-7
I know I just threw it at you, but did you catch what redemption
means here?
Redemption/Peduwth is God saying, dear son and daughter, I
know that what is on this side of the waiting and hoping is painful. But I am
going to divide it from you, separate it from you, redeem it entirely. I will
liberate you. And I will do this abundantly. You, dear heart, are loved. I am
here. Hold on.
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” Isaiah 43:19.
By Grace,
Amanda Conquers
And because I know I need these words stamped on my heart, and maybe you do too, here's a printable I made just for us. (Just click the link for a printable document version)
If you missed the introduction to this series, you can find it HERE.
If you would like to continue reading, here are the rest of the posts in the series:
Season of MourningWhen You Are Trying to Make Something Out of Your Ashes
Project Still Hope
What You Need to Know When Fear is Suffocating You
Practical Advice for the Grieving Woman and Those Who Love Her