Friday's Letters: Renewed Hope

On this lovely Friday, I am experiencing renewed hope.  My last Friday’s letters reflected my struggle with retaining my faith and trust in God while witnessing so much heartache and pain, especially of little children.  God heard my plea this week, and I just feel like He gave me this opportunity to see one of His great miracles and stories of love and hope to help strengthen my faith.  It is so easy to remain strong and keep believing when everything around us is going great, but it is so easy to falter and lose that faith and question God when we see or experience pain and hurt and sadness. 

Dear Lindsay:  Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful miracle story with us.  Who knew when I found you a few months ago through a link up with Kelly’s Korner to help find bloggers in our area, that your story would reward me in such a way as this.  At the time I first read your blog, your heart for adoption endeared me to your story.  You had adopted your first baby, a little girl named Hannah, and your love for her and for the God who gave her to you shone through.  You were looking to continue to grow your family through adoption and were sharing all the ups and downs and struggles of waiting for your next baby to come to you.  Unbeknownst to us all, your wait was already over.  I understand now that you could not share your story until now when everything is finally settled.  You have shared two unbelievable miracles:  one is the birth and blessingof your little boy and the second is his miraculous healing.  Your little boy was born with fatal diseases, including fetal hydrops (I googled it despite your warning and was just shocked and awed by what he endured and came through) and a very serious and potentially fatal heart condition that would undoubtedly require future surgeries and limit his abilities for the rest of his life.  He was born at 30 weeks before his birth mother could even institute her plan of arranging for his adoption.  Your sweet little Hannah appears to be such a special gift from God, and God delivered His special message about the arrival of little Hunter on the exact day that his birth mother signed over all of her parental rights and left her son to the care of the hospital nurses and staff with the expectation that he would certainly not make it.  Then, you found out about this little man who desperately needed a special family despite his slight chance of survival, and you immediately picked up everything and went to be with him for whatever time he had left.  You never lost faith, and God rewarded your faith.  Your baby fought, and he was surviving.  Your baby was brought here to Charlotte to one of the best Children’s Hospitals to receive the best care possible, and you moved here to be near all his doctors and him.  Immediately upon being brought to the hospital in Charlotte, pediatric cardiologists immediately ran all new tests and ultrasounds to get a better picture of his heart condition.  His diagnosed conditions from all the previous ultrasounds and tests were sure and present.  His neonatologist was surprised to tell you that your son’s heart condition was no longer there.  It was completely gone!  He said there was no doubt about it that it had existed, but it was just not there anymore.  He said it was nothing short of a miracle that he could not explain.  There was no explanation.  I love when physicians can admit that healing miracles do exist.  I know your son was healed because of yours and your family’s strong faith and prayers.  God’s plan is miraculous!  Your story brought me renewed hope that God’s miracles are all around us.  I know that in the case of little Henry and little Piper who are in my thoughts and prayers constantly, their healing miracles are also in God’s hands.  God will care for them in the way that only he can see because He loves them as only He can. 

Dear God:  I thank you for giving me Lindsay’s story to renew and strengthen my faith in you.  Despite the pain and sadness all around us, I know that You are in control and have a beautiful plan for those that believe in You.  I know that in my own life You have blessed me more times that I could ever count, and I know that I truly would not be where I am today without You.  I pray that this story touches those hearts that are also struggling with their faith. 

Dear faith strugglers like me:  I know a few people that I will not name that I feel like especially need this today.  They have let sadness and disappointment overshadow God’s goodness and blessings although I can see from their lives that God has blessed them.  For those of you struggling, I ask that you take a minute to read my pastor’s blog for today, “Good far outweighs the bad.”  It really does!  It is so easy to let those bad times overshadow the good times, but I try to always give God the glory in my own life and in the telling of our life story for that purpose.  At the end of the year, I can always name tons of great memories from that year and can hardly recall any bad stuff.  Even after hearing dreadful stories like the one that happened yesterday in New York City to those precious little children whose trusted caregiver betrayed their trust and brutally murdered them, we need to remember that yes, evil does exist in this world, but one day God will wipe that evil off this earth once and for all.  For now, we must choose God’s goodness over that evil and not give that evil the power it seeks to control our lives.  That choice is ours -- that is what is so beautiful about God's love!  It is freely given and not demanded!  During this approaching season of Thanksgiving, I ask that you remember to count your blessings daily and not let those bad things dominate Your lives.  God does want good things for His people, and He wants them to trust Him.  As David so wisely writes, “Life has much more hope than we can ever realize.”  And he is a wise man since he did go to UNC Chapel Hill and played basketball under the counsel of the greatest coach in history, Dean Smith.  (Any mention of that dreadful Duke coach will be considered blasphemy…there’s a reason God made our skies Carolina Blue, folks! Hehe!  I mean Dean did coach the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, and his players looked up to him as a father figure.)   

Have a great Friday, everyone!