A Picture of Hope

Kim Andrich reflects on how God uses uncertainties to help us to trust in Him and find true joy.

Sometimes I watch my three young girls when their backs are to me, while they’re sitting together looking at a book, playing with toys, or walking down a trail ahead of me.

I like to compose pictures of those moments in my head—pictures that, if I could, I would send to myself as I had been twelve years ago. To the mother of two boys, the sister of three younger brothers, the woman who had just experienced her second miscarriage in nine months and whose heart was breaking. To the woman who, though she deeply loved her sons and her brothers, longed for a little girl to dress in pretty dresses and little sandals, to braid hair and make bracelets, to read sentimental books while snuggled together on the couch.

To the woman who doubted she’d ever have that girl she longed for and was afraid she would never carry another child, girl or boy, to term again. To that mother, I would send a picture of three little people dressed in pink and purple, whose long hair covered their shoulders and upper back—a gift of reassurance that would pick her back up and give her a smile and a sense of hope.

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Those three young girls, with their backs turned to the eye, would still be shrouded in mystery, largely unknown to the me of twelve years ago, having no hint of face or name and no glimpse into each one’s unique personality. Yet there they would be, mine to one day hold and dress up, to create with and read with. The promise of a gift still wrapped until the right time would come to receive each one.

Life would be easier if we could get that little glimpse, still shrouded largely in mystery but offering a hint of the future and of how our questions and petitions will be answered, of how our trials will be resolved, offering us the gift of reassurance and hope.

In reality, we are not meant to know how things will turn out. We are meant to trust. Our futures are hidden, and our lives are in the hands of a Being who loves us and who has our best interests in mind, who takes care of us and brings good out of every situation when we allow Him to do that.

He already had in His possession every single picture I have ever composed of my little girls crowded around a book or walking with arms linked, even when I did not. He knew how my questions would be answered, and, though in my pain I did not listen closely, I could hear Him telling me everything would turn out better than I could imagine. I could hear Him say that He was taking care of me and that He would answer my prayers.

I had the opportunity at that time to choose to trust Him and the unknown-to-me plans that He had for me. I had the choice to live that trust or to impatiently worry about the future and about whether this hope of having a baby girl would ever be fulfilled. I also had the choice to accept the unknown and to acknowledge that, whatever the outcome, all would be well simply because all I had then and all I would ever have come from His loving hands.

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Unfortunately, I did not choose that sort of trust and acceptance immediately. Instead, I allowed my miscarriages and my deep and painful emptiness to get to me. I let anxiety set in and allowed my peace to be stolen from me.

I experienced a great deal of tension and anxiety before I realized, first by its absence and later through my surrender, that joy comes with that very trust I had neglected to put in God.

Joy, I realized, is a state of mind more than it is a feeling. It develops from a decision to trust even when things appear bleak. It is a knowing in faith that God is working all things to good even when the outcome is hidden from our eyes.

Joy is an accepting of all things as coming from the loving hand of a good God. It is being able to sit with our deepest longings, knowing that God, who gives Himself to us daily, is the answer to each of these longings. It is being grateful for His presence, knowing that in God we have all we need, no matter how or when He answers our prayers.

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In the unknown, I learned instead to put my trust in God and in His wisdom and providence because of who He is rather than what He could give me. #CatholicMom

It was better for the me of twelve years ago to be without those pictures of my someday-to-be girls, as much as the images would have eased my pain and worry.

In the unknown, I learned instead to put my trust in Him and in His wisdom and providence because of who He is rather than what He could give me. I learned to cling to Him rather than to what the future would hold.

In veiling my future from my eyes, He revealed Himself instead.

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