This post was inspired by Kayla Aimee’s new book, Anchored: Finding Hope in the Unexpected. Order your copy of #AnchoredHope today and receive this printable as a free gift by clicking here!
Kayla Aimee’s new book Anchored, an honest, heart wrenching and sometimes humorous account of how she dealt with her daughter’s premature birth and medical journey, was written in a way that would encourage and inspire anyone who needs a message of finding hope in unexpected circumstances. Even though I haven’t experienced anything like the birth of a micro-preemie, Kayla’s words made me realize that all mothers, regardless of the trials we encounter through our parenthood journey, face the same daunting task – raising cute little people who we hope will grow up to become selfless, caring and God-fearing grown-up people. And in facing that responsibility, our hope and faith go hand-in-hand.
Many times since I became a mother, I’ve had to make decisions that would affect my girls in some way; for most of those decisions, my husband and I prayed, discussed and evaluated what we should do.
Faced with the arrival of our “bonus baby” -- Do we add on to our small home in a decent school district or move to an even better area to make sure that all of our girls had the academic and extracurricular activities that would challenge and enrich them? After going through the process of hiring an architect and getting township permits to build an addition (not the easiest or quickest process!) we scrapped it all two years later in favor of moving. In a matter of four months, we were able to buy a new home, sell our old home (closing on both within a week of each other) and get our daughter involved in her new high school marching band, all before the new school year started. The way everything fell into place could only have been by the grace of God.
Faced with a new full time job after being a stay at home mom for more than 10 years –- Having to leave our youngest in daycare when I had never experienced that with our older two, my husband and I visited almost a dozen daycare facilities, most of which were perfectly fine and one of which had a pool! I couldn’t shake the feeling that we hadn’t found the right one for our daughter, so I continued searching even after he couldn’t take time off for the visits any longer. Ignoring the time crunch with a new job looming just days away, I knew as soon as I walked in to the right one that she would be loved, cared for and taught the way I wished I could do for her at home.
When I start to get overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being a mother, these are the situations that I can point to in hindsight as proof that hope and faith are inextricably entwined. We had hope that we were doing the right thing and faith that God would let us know one way or another by either placing or removing obstacles in our path. God was always a part of the process, even if we doubted along the way.
As mothers, we have a choice - to hope and have faith, in the everyday moments and in the life-changing moments. Sometimes that hope comes easy and our faith lights our path for miles ahead. But other times, our hope comes desperately and our faith is something that we have to blindly cling to when we can’t see where we’re going. Either way, God is always there, even when it’s hard to see Him. As Kayla writes, “This part of faith, this believing without seeing, it’s the part that makes it a choice and not always an easy one.”
