One Word: Believe

A new year.

A new word.

A new start.

Truth be told, I loved my One Word for 2012 so much I really didn't want to pick a new word.  I have a love/hate relationship with change, and I kinda think I rocked True last year.  

Why fix it, if it ain't broken? 

What if the word I came up with for 2013 was a floozy kinda word? You know, just a word for the sake of a word.

What if the word I came up with ended up flopping, irrelevant and weak?

What if?  {insert swift blow to head from the Holy Spirit}  

What if I put myself aside, and let God come up with my word?  A novel idea, I know.

With that swift blow to the head, I waited. 

And waited.

Until, God gave me my word for the next year as I was walking in to Finley's bedroom.

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I sat in the rocking chair in her room, thinking about this new word. Dokimozo-ing it. Trying to determine if it was really from God.

I tested it against other words. Beautiful. Hope. Happy.  

I just sat with it, swaying with empty arms.

I looked up it's meaning.

be·lieve

 [bih-leev] verb, be·lieved, be·liev·ing.

verb

1.  to have confidence in the truth

2.  to accept something as true

Oh. Dear. 

With this I knew.  

For one year God challenged me to discover my trueself, to be true to myself, to be true to others, and to identify all that is pure and true, leaving behind all that was not.

Now, in this new year, God is saying, You thought I was done? {insert chuckle} Now it is time for you to BELIEVE in all that is true.

Ugh!

I was comfortable.

Now God is pushing me back into the tension.

He is challenging me to shift my thinking from knowing what is true to believing what is true.

And, for a recovering cynic like myself, that is no small task.

He is asking me to open my hands ever more and to believe in what I have found to be true.

To believe that we will be provided for.

To believe that I am beautiful.

To believe that I am worth it.

To believe that the world is broken.

To believe in redemption.

To believe in the Hope.

Holding Hope

It seems like a lifetime ago, but it has only been one month since we received our referral and met our Finley Grace.

During the long 28 months of waiting for a referral, I would find myself blocking out any thought of our baby and definitely did not plan, for fear that we did not have a baby out there.

There seemed to be too much on the line and the thought of being disappointed overwhelmed me.

Until, one day when Steve and I decided that we could no longer live in fear, but we had to choose hope.

We dusted off the crib, putting it together this time as thirty somethings instead of the young twenty somethings we were when we first pieced the crib together.

And, I decided, that although we did not know if we were going to have a boy or a girl our baby needed a name.

I gathered some supplies {Cricut, scrapbook paper, glue stick, grey card stock and a frame} and cut out each name that we were considering for the newest member of our family.  After each name was cut they came to life as I glued them onto the card stock.

 

From that time forward, each time we walked into our baby's room we could imagine a handsome little Shepherd, an adorable boy Graham, a sweet little Finley or a precious Emerson, and our fear slowly moved to hope.  

And, hope gave way to a heart that was ready for the day that we could name our child for the final time.

And what an amazing day that was!  It was the day that we proclaimed that we would do it all over again, and Finley Grace was worth every bit of the wait.

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