My Word is Hope – Lisa’s Story

{{Our team was inspired by one of our fellow contributor’s posts, “No More New Year’s Resolutions – Just Choose One Word”, so we decided to share our selected words and the reasoning behind them in a series called “My Word Is…”. Follow along as we share our stories, and then update on where our words have taken us at the end of the year.}}

As I sat entranced in the gaze of my little love, I couldn’t help but wonder if she could reflect on this past year, what she would say in her sweet, tiny voice.

I wondered what her little heart would say about her small and fierce life.

My hope is that she knows her worth. How valued and loved she is. How incredibly beautiful the shining light from her heart is. How wonderfully made and graciously forgiven she is.

That each adventure was filled with amazement and awe that only a toddler can have. If she knows the spark of wanderlust that she ignites in my soul as I treasure her delight in a new discovery.

That every challenge she faced, she did so with fierce determination, incredible strength and stubbornness, yet remarkable humility and decision making as she made the right choice. That her fire breathing, crazy haired, big love, sing and dance spirit is infectious.

That her ability to speak, imagine, create, decide is untouched, uninhibited, and delectably beautiful.

This is my hope for her…

And this is my hope for me.

These attributes, characteristics – the essence of my sweet baby Bea – these are subtle glimpses of things that she is giving me the opportunity to discover about the little girl who lives within me.

Life has been mixed bag of worms for me. At a very young age, heartache, pain, and uncertainty were neatly packaged and put away with a note that said, “when you feel safe, you can open me.”

At 28 years old, I have finally opened the package…

It’s been filled with trauma, tragedy, and tumultuous relationships, with self-doubt and lack of worth rounding out the odoriferous pile.

For half of 2015, great tears, hard work, faith and being held up by handful of divinely selected life-givers (because “friend” isn’t a strong enough word), I began to debride my wounds and open my heart.  The freedom that I saw in my little girl’s eyes, I knew I wanted to experience it. I knew it would come with a cost, but I realized that the cost of living life with secrets and pain was not the way I wanted my child to remember her mother. I could not go through life any longer knowing that I did not do by best to live an abundant life.

Because that is what I hoped for her the moment she was but a bean in my womb.

So this is the life I shall continue to grow.

New, challenging, uncertain and hard.

But free.

And filled with this new feeling called hope.