Hold onto Hope

Most of you know how much I love music... most of my day is spent walking around with one song or another in my head. It truly brings peace to my soul and happiness to my heart. One thing I love about my eclectic taste in music is that more often than not I find music in a television show or a movie I've seen. I focus on a section of the song I recall hearing and as soon as I can I "google" it in order to find the artist. This has happened in the last couple of weeks and the song I found I can't help but listen to it over and over again.

If you have not heard of Amy Stroup, or her song "Hold onto Hope, Love" I highly recommend it. She has an honest and pure voice, and the words she sings are so simple. Here is just a snapshot of this song:

"Hold onto hope, love, I've searched high and low for you

for you

Each day gets closer so hold on stronger to me and you

Someday soon I'll find you

Someday soon I'll know you

Someday..."

As an artist she is listed in the pop/rock genre, but I can't help but think that song has a little bit of faith behind it. Today I was sitting at my desk working on some things when that song came on and I was moved to just sit and listen. As I was listening I looked up at the picture of my family from my sister's wedding. Cheryl has some of the most remarkable pictures/memories from her wedding day and as I sat looking at the one of my family I remembered asking Cheryl a few months ago about that day. I asked her if she could have imagined the journey God would lead her and her husband down as a married couple. There was so much joy and laughter that day, could she have ever imagined that they would be handing their firstborn son to the God who created him before they were ready?

Not far from that picture from that day is Baby Billy's picture from his first Christmas. He was only a month old when the picture was taken, one of a few pictures I have of my sweet nephew. I'm missing him dearly lately. I think that the older his younger brother, Nathan, gets the more I think about where Billy would be if he were still here with us, what kind of relationship he'd have with his older sister, Avery and with Nathan.

But the thing that really gets me is picturing myself in the place of my sister. One day, hopefully, it will be my wedding day... my chance to say forever to the man I will spend the rest of my life with. My prayer is that we'd walk in the same humility and strength as my sister and her husband. I can't help but wonder what that day will be like, what the day will be like when we welcome our children into this world. But I guess for now I hold onto that hope... that one day I will experience both and walk life with a man on fire for God.

"But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

~ Romans 8:25