The Resolve.org #GivingTuesday topic for December is “Give Hope”

Hope sometimes feels like this magical thing that we hold on to so tightly and are so afraid to lose. It can make us smile when everything else we’ve experienced is trying to tell us it shouldn’t actually exist. It gives us power to move forward when the weight of trauma would otherwise be too heavy to allow us to take a step. Sometimes it’s stolen by grief and flies so far away that it becomes invisible in the clouds. Sometimes repeated failures and disappointments hammer our hope so deeply into the ground that it disappears into the earth beneath us. When we fight like hell to get hope back again, that tiny little spark can allow us to believe in our dreams that had fallen away. And yes, we fight for it. We don’t give up.

Hope is what allowed me to try to get pregnant again after my first miscarriage. Hope pushed me forward to try to get pregnant again after my second miscarriage.

Hope lead me to my eighth embryo transfer.   But it failed. I still do not have a baby in my arms. Hope disappeared again but then miraculously returned. I’m not sure why, but I am relieved it is here. Hope is my strength.

How do we get hope back when it goes missing? For me, I let it go away. I grieve, I recover, I love my babies that were lost and I let others have hope for me when I can’t.   But when my hope is gone, I’m somehow still able to give it to others. Then, slowly, it comes back to me.

Thinking about hope, reminds me of something I wrote in this blog a couple of weeks after my second miscarriage. I was overwhelmed with grief and couldn’t imagine taking a step forward but I let someone else have hope for me. I heard my husband say this to me:

While you feel you have lost hope,

It is not gone.

I am holding it for you.

While you search for faith,

I will keep mine close.

I will wait for you.

While you see darkness

I can see a baby in your arms.

I will save this dream until yours is no longer broken.

What do you do to hold on to hope for your own dreams? When it is taken from you, how do you get it back? My wish for you is that if you cannot find it, it will find you.

Photo by CJE