The Beginning of It All (Day 2- Hope Against Hope)

My husband and I were married in 2003 and we were so in love.  We seriously could not get enough of each other.  I knew God had sent me the man of my dreams.  I knew our love was special.  I knew our love could stand the tests of time.  We took our vows seriously and wanted nothing more than a marriage that honored God.

We didn't experience the commonly dreaded first year of marriage pains; in fact we enjoyed learning our differences, celebrated our uniqueness and laughed at our quirks.

Life was good.  We had good times together.  We focused on learning each other and growing together. Becoming one.

It was important to us to establish ourselves as a couple before bringing kids into the equation.  We both wanted time to travel and to enjoy it being just the two of us.

Finally after about a year and a half into our marriage, we began to talk of having kids.  We felt we were ready.  We had bought our first home, had stable careers and just felt the time was right for us to become parents.

We began praying for children, although our mindset at the time wasn't to 'try' to have kids.  We just knew it would happen.  Before long we noticed a significant amount of time had gone by and conception hadn't happened.

We prayed more.  We prayed HARD.  We found scripture in the Bible to increase our faith, to stand on. The thought never occurred to us maybe this wasn't going to happen for us.  It was supposed to. It had to. After all, we were praying for this.  We believed with everything in us that we were going to be parents. I'm always in awe how children respond to my husband.  He was meant to be a Dad. I have always for as long as I can remember desired to be a Mom.  

There were so many around us conceiving effortlessly.  I was invited to baby shower after baby shower.  I still am.  I silently wondered if I would ever have one of my own.  

The good life my husband and I shared became hard.  Draining.  Unfair.  God was silent on this one.
I didn't feel led to move in any direction.  Just to wait. Just to keep praying.  Just to believe.

I read everything I could get my hands on relative to conceiving.  What to do, how to do it...to no avail.  At this time, I would say we were officially 'trying'.  But nothing was happening!

This desire was so deep my heart ached for it.  I begin to feel inadequate.  Ashamed.  Embarrassed.

"God you have to do this for us", I pleaded.  "Remember us", I continued in prayer.

Photo by Tedy Blessed licensed under Creative Commons

As I aspired to build my faith; as much as I could muster I read the story of Abraham's faith "who against hope believed in hope".  And I wondered how.  I wondered if I can be so intimate with God and believe Him so that even when all seemed hopeless, I would continue to hope.

The story continues...












I hope you will join me.  I hope my story will encourage, strengthen and cause you to hope against hope. Feel free to comment below.

This is Day 2 of a 31 day series of “Hope Against Hope”. To read all of the posts in this series, click here. To read what several other bloggers are writing for the month of October, click here.