Courageous Hope

While pregnant with my second child and looking for names I resonated with the name Riley Hope, if it were to be a girl. Name meanings are of great importance to me, this name means Courageous Hope.  I was in a season where I felt God was calling me to hope, to hope courageously, and so it fit. When pregnant with a my first child we were in a season of much grace, beautiful grace, we had grace for one another and felt the grace of God, and so our first child is Bella Grace.  Well this time around we ended up having a boy so the name Riley Hope did not get used. That baby boy is now five months old. We always said we saw ourselves with only two children and now with one boy and one girl we feel like we are complete.  But recently the name Riley Hope kept coming into my heart, popping up here and there. I felt like it was a seed planted in my heart. I then became overwhelmed in my sleep deprived state of babyhood at the thought that perhaps the Creator was trying to drop the idea that maybe there was another child in our furture. When I shared it with my husband he said, “No I think Courageous Hope, is the ministry that God is birthing in you to give the world, to offer hope to the world.”  God has been doing a work in my heart in the area of hope for quite some time. One area I have had to cling desperately to hope was regarding my marriage. Just recently God began to fulfill my hope in a way I never imagined in regard to my marriage, bringing a beautiful healing.  I have been overwhelmed with hope for others. And so let it begin. I hope this blog will become a light in a dark place, a place where the discouraged can find the courage to hope.