tikvah {hope}

so i did it.


i went to clifton on a whim on friday night with sheila and got a tattoo. 


i've had it planned for awhile - tikvah. the hebrew word for hope.


hope. it's so many things to me. it's what i cling to in my professional, personal, and spiritual life. it's the little girl that i love so much. it's the reason i can get through life's storms. it's everything. everything.


i had decided on tikvah when i was in college studying hebrew. i loved the word. i was way too scared to get a tattoo but i knew if i ever got the guts to, that's what i would get. then in 2009, my sister gave birth to the most beautiful little person i've ever seen and she named her hope. that's when i knew i would eventually go through with it. i love that child...in case you couldn't tell. :)


getting the tattoo this weekend was random and unplanned but seems to have come at the perfect time. 


it's a reminder - "my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness."


i had a conversation with a friend on friday about faith and hope and belief and doubt. i told her something a friend of mine told me once - i feel sorry for people who don't struggle with their faith. i do. faith in Jesus Christ is {yeah i'm going to say this} kind of crazy. believing that a man, who was God, died on a cross for my sins and that, because i trust him as my savior, i will spend eternity in a place called heaven with him because a book tells me so - is crazy.


so there are times of doubt. when life is hard, when it doesn't make sense, when i'm angry with God himself - doubt prevails. but the reason i believe, the reason that my faith returns is because after doubt, hope prevails.


today is the anniversary of my sweet friend kevin's death. death is never easy - especially when they're young. i saw him at midnight the night before and by 8am on october 2, 2005, i got a phone call that he had passed away. that doesn't make sense. it's not fair. i cried and i cried and i cried that morning and i'm crying now. my friend dying at 23 years old when he had his whole life ahead of him and so much to offer to this world made doubt prevail.


this morning at church, we sang a song that says 'what joy for those whose hope is in the name of the Lord." it was a reminder of where my hope is placed. there's a verse in 1 corinthians that says if our hope is in this life only, we are the people who should be most pitied. there are people who are strong enough to face life's trials and never waver in their faith. i am not one of them. i ask why all the time. i asked why on this day in 2005 and i probably have for one reason or another asked about one million times since. but my hope is eternal. which is why i can doubt and question when life sucks the faith out of me and then after, i can hope. i can believe. i can trust.


c.s. lewis said 'most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. there are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.'


there are things that i hope for here on earth - success, love, health, peace. and there are things that i hope for that are eternal. and so as that little girl serves as a reminder of the hope i've placed in Jesus Christ, so does this tattoo, this word - tikvah. 


romans 5:2-4 - through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. more than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope.