Daring to Hope

Naptime bliss.
I deeply relish my breaks and always try to insist that A spend at least 30 minutes of naptime doing quiet time in his room before we have mama-son time... but even still, my favorite way to spend naptime is doing my own thing with one (or both) of my sweet girls snuggled up to me.
<3

I’ve never been crippled by a true tragedy. I’ve had my share of scary hurts—haven’t we all?— and some minor tragedies that felt much worse in the moment than they do now that they’ve come and gone, but I’ve never had a true tragedy rip through my family. We haven’t lost anyone, haven’t battled cancer, haven’t stood on a hillside and watched our home burn to the ground or huddled up on our roof and prayed a helicopter would reach us before water levels did.

There is tragedy all over the world—just look at what’s happening right now! Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Jose, state-of-emergency fires in Montana, and all on the heels of the terrible Charleston aftermath—and there are more private tragedies occurring in families everywhere, everyday. Diagnoses that drop people to their knees, a screech of tires that changes everything, unthinkable devastation followed up with “I don’t understand it. I just looked away for one minute.”

Each and every time I hear or read about tragedies like these, my heart breaks a little more for the people involved… and I wonder so much. Why them? Why was I once again—thank you, Lord—spared? How could this happen? What if…

I think about my own faith quite often and how it’s so easy to have faith when things are going well… but what would my faith look like if I were plunged into a tragedy myself? I want to think that I would stay strong. I want to think that people would look at me with pity in their eyes and that whatever they said, I’d have the same response—“I know God will bring good out of this. I have faith that everything will be okay. Good, even.”

But imagining those thoughts and feeling them are two different things and all I can really do is hope I never have to find out.

I absolutely loved Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis and very quickly devoured her new book, Daring to Hope by Katie Davis Majors, in which she talks about the way God brought her goodness in spite of a family tragedy… and in spite of the many heartaches she’s constantly surrounded by in Uganda.

Just like her first book, this one was wrought with emotion and filled up my heart with peace, inspiration, and even hope. I highly recommend both books and am happy to say that I think they work things out in your heart whether you’re in the middle of a true tragedy or, like me, have never actually experienced anything so significant.

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this (completely honest) review.