Hope has wings

One of the lowest points in my life was my six year struggle with infertility. Motherhood has always fascinated me. My favorite childhood pastime was when I was playing with my dolls in our playroom set up as a mini home with a play stove, refrigerator, play food and even an ironing board and iron!

I was filled with hope when I got married at age 23, and I envisioned a baby arriving around age 28. Year after year came and went with no baby. My hope began to waver and after the five year mark with no answers to our struggle, it seemed hopeless. I remember reading a scripture that says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” My heart was sick.

The great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, grew up in Maine near the Portland harbor. He spent a significant amount of time at the beach, wading and watching the tides. At high tide the water rises very high, and at low tide the water draws way back. Low tide seems to last forever, and then almost unnoticeably, the tide turns around and the water comes back in. He wrote:

“The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.”

How many times when you have reached the lowest point, in the darkest place, has there been divine intervention encouraging you to wait just a few more days, or just a little while longer; give it one more chance? How often, when you hold onto that voice, has something good happened? Something inside us says, “Don’t give up, keep going.” And we do. We hang on to that tiny thread of hope and the hope lifts us up.

Jerome Groopmans, author of “The Anatomy of Hope,” says:

“Hope has wings.”

This life lesson has revisited me several times since the birth of my quadruplets, which was one year after my lowest point. I held on and did not give up on my “mama” vision that was placed in me at a very young age. My four children are my miracles of hope. The "voice" of hope carried me through numerous life transitions; the empty nest, new job titles, moving to my own home and a remarriage to an incredible man. When the ebb was lowest, I remembered my first powerful experience of the turn of the tide.

I know without a doubt; hope does have wings. Those wings empower me to rise up and soar, taking in the immense beauty of life.

But those who hope in the Lord, will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:31