Choose to Hope

In everything that happens around us, there is a choice. A choice of discouragement or hope. 

I turn 40 this month. And while I should be depressed about it, I’m strangely hopeful and optimistic that this will be the best decade of my life. 

Yesterday, one girl my age from grade school had her third child and another girl my age from high school is pregnant with her first. Both of them seemed to get pregnant two months after they turned 40, strangely enough.

I had two choices yesterday. I could choose to feel defeated, discouraged, and hopeless because by comparison, I am not yet pregnant and have never been able to get pregnant. The Enemy probably would have loved that. Fall into a pit of despair and jealousy.

Or, I could choose to see the hope in these stories brought to my attention. Two girls my age had and are having babies. Maybe there’s hope for me too as I enter my fourth decade. If you ask me, I think God is more in that corner. Time and time again, the Lord's voice speaks hope into my life.

Many women who have challenges with fertility around me fall into hopeless thinking. Their family members and friends get the child they desired and it sends them into a hopeless and discouraged state for weeks, months, or even longer. It’s taken me awhile to realize that’s not helpful in these times and that maybe this happened not to discourage me, but rather give me hope or some other positive lesson God is trying to instill in me.

Everything that happens around us can elicit a response. Let’s make sure that response is helpful and hopeful because anything less than that is probably not from God.