Hope is an expectation, an inventive vision, a dream. Hope is a desire.

Hope imagines what faith can create and build. Hope is the designer, the architect, the plans on paper; faith is the carpenter that constructs something tangible, something that you can see and touch from what was once only a dream.

When hope is dashed by doubt and fear, love perseveres...and love always has hope!

Faith, hope and love, a partnership of pursuable, learnable virtue.

As a visionary, a dreamer, hope is where I live. I wake up in the morning with hope at my side, having dreamt together all night. I try to spend time with faith and love, but hope I know.

One of my most vivid experiences with hope occurred while standing on the most eastern point of Mexico, on a tiny island called Isla Mujeres. It was September 2009, and my soulmate Brandee and I were celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary.

If God is love, and love always hopes, than God hopes. So I believe that standing at the edge of the ocean, in the warmth of the sun and of God’s love, he was inspiring me with His hope. Inspiring me to open my heart, our home, and live out our love. He was whispering hope to my soul on the rhythm of the waves.

Adoption. This was the message of hope that He was nudging into my thoughts. He was making His hope become mine. Somewhere a little girl is hoping for a forever home, and He was bringing her hope to me.

Up until this time, I’d never considered adding another child to our family, especially not by adoption. I fully supported the concept of adoption of course, but felt it just wasn’t for us. Everything changed on that beautiful beach in Mexico. Hope was sparked. I remember hearing children laughing, looking back at the boardwalk and seeing two little girls playing together, one American and one Mexican. I looked back at the ocean, contemplating the message God was entrancing me with before looking back to the boardwalk, finding that the two little girls from two different cultures had disappeared, their laughter only memory etched in my mind.

Teary-eyed, I looked back to the waves and watched them slowly roll in and I was amazed at the peace, the vision, the hope that God was filling me with. My wife asked what I was thinking about, and I said, “You wouldn’t believe it...” but went on to share what was happening in my heart. That afternoon, nearly two years ago, we began our hopeful journey of adoption.

It hasn’t been an easy journey, and on occasion it feels like we’re in the middle of the ocean with no idea which way to go, but our God is faithful, and He ignites hope when we have none. In Romans 5, we read about how suffering produces perseverance, which produces character, which produces hope.

Sometimes the dark clouds roll in and it becomes difficult to see our destination on the horizon; but it is in those stormy times that we cling to hope.

<em>Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23</em>