Love is always hopeful.
1 Corinthians 13:7 (NLT)
When Kim noticed her daughter wasn’t developing according to the ‘norm’ and failed to reach obvious milestones, she took her daughter to several specialists. One physician told Kim and her husband that Lorena was just “floppy.” Other doctors offered little hope other than to provide a litany of “nevers.” They predicted Lorena would never talk, never crawl, never have a pincer grip, and so on.
But Kim refused to give up hope. “For some reason, she (the specialist) also seemed to reside in Neverland and kept repeating the first specialist’s litany of “nevers.” I got the distinct impression that she thought I was in denial and felt it was her duty to shake me out of it. I am not saying that I wasn’t in some form of denial, but the flip side of denial is hope. And hope makes you push forward and keep fighting.” (1)
Love and hope are the two greatest factors that spur special-needs parents to press on. We won’t give up on our kids because we desire what is best for them and love won’t settle for anything less. Some parents lose hope when their expectations are snatched away and replaced with a new reality. Others question God. When we discovered one of our sons had autism we wondered why God chose us to raise a special-needs child. Gradually, we came to realize God had a purpose and, instead of fighting it, we needed to embrace it.
In his Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul states, “Love is always hopeful:” not just when life is going well and circumstances are good; not just when we wake up on the right side of the bed or when the sun is shining. Love is always hopeful because biblical hope is not based on what is humanly possible but is founded on the unchanging character of God and His sovereign plan. Nothing happens to His children without His consent – not even those circumstances that don’t necessarily make sense to our limited understanding.
By the way, except for acquiring the ability to speak, Lorena eventually succeeded in doing everything those specialists predicted she would never do. Love is always hopeful.
Thought: “Hope is called the anchor of the soul because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a ‘wish’; rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.” – RC Sproul
For further reading:
- Romans 5:5
- Romans 15:13
- Colossians 1:5
- 1 Peter 3:15
(1) Kimberly J. Stults, Lessons from Lorena; Living with Autism, (Mustang, OK: Tate Publishing, 2010), pg.39.
Excerpt from my devotional, A Year in God’s Classroom