Big Big Prayers Needed ASAP

I want to share a message I got from my precious friend, Melanie, tonight. Her gorgeous daughter, Hope, is the cutie on my sidebar. Please take a look at this angel and say a prayer. And read this heart-felt and brutally honest plea from her precious mama!

I would like to ask each of you to pray for our little Hope tomorrow. She is having some heart issues again, and will be having a heart cath in the morning from 7:30am until 10:30am CST. She will be kept overnight. Specifically, we are asking the Father to open her aortic valve. Please join us in this prayer.

Chappy and I have prayed for God to do a miracle in Hope's life since we learned of her condition at an ultrasound in my 16th week of pregnancy. She'll be 4 on September 14th, so we've been praying for that miracle for a long time. Imagine getting up every morning to touch your baby girl's heart......expecting a miracle.....only to find it hasn't happened yet. Imagine wanting a miracle so badly, you can feel it in every fiber of your body all of the time.....a little round-faced angel being a constant reminder. Imagine holding your little one so tightly, hoping the love from your heart will flow into her little 36 inch, 29lb. body and make everything better. Imagine knowing God can and wondering why He's doesn't. This has been our lives. Praying. Expecting. Faithing. Hoping.

This journey continues to rock our world. Many times we stop to wonder if God is really real, because if He is real, why isn't He moving mountains for Hope like scripture promises those who have faith? During these moments of doubt (mixed with anger and frustration), the Father always seems to meet us. Sometimes in the strangest ways. For instance, this summer during one of those seasons of doubt, our yard became over-run with bag worms. They are nasty critters. The bagworms disguise themselves as part of the evergreen tree and completely suck the life from the tree within a matter of days. As I was picking off my 1500th bagworm (since we hesitate to spray chemicals that might harm Hope and Charlie) I began to really think about God and Evolution:

The local nursery told me the bagworm wears his disguise to protect himself from birds that would like to eat him. The ONLY purpose for the disguise is to trick the birds. It is a very clever disguise; in fact, until the tree is dying, he goes completely unnoticed. If I follow the evolution theory, the bagworm had to learn at some point that he needed to be protected from being eaten by a bird in order to "discover" the need for the disguise. However, going with that reason, the very first bagworm that ever "evolved" would've been eaten by a bird and would never have had the opportunity to learn he needed to evolve, because he would've died before getting the chance to disguise himself. Therefore, the bagworm must have been created with his peculiar disguise. This may not make sense to anyone but me.....but I was able to thank God for the bagworm and find faith again.

I don't know about you, but I want to audibly HEAR the voice of the Father. This would make things so much simpler. He spoke to Moses, Abraham, and Jacob......why did He stop speaking out loud to people? Then I am brought back to the verb: FAITH. It is not seeing or hearing, but choosing to believe in spite of the silence. That is where we are. We are choosing to believe through the silence......and the silence is, once again, screaming at us!

We have spent the last 4 years falling head over heels in love with our Hope. Many of you know her, but for those who don't, she is precious. She can't speak, but she says volumes in her own prissy way. She has huge eyes that become even more enormous with her thick glasses that are rimmed in green, gold and pink. She charms the socks off of everyone she meets and giggles to keep herself out of trouble when she knows she has done something really bad. She tries her very best to keep up with other children her age and hasn't a clue she is any different. Her chubby fingers wrap around mine and tug a bit when she wants to take me somewhere, and she squeals with delight when Barney sings the "I Love You" song on her favorite video.

Before Hope, to be perfectly honest, I didn't know if it would be possible to love Hope as much as I love my "normal" kids. Oh my, have I learned something about myself. My heart grew a million sizes when she entered my life.....and it continues to grow. Our entire family feels this way. She has brought a tenderness to our hearts we never had before. She melts us.

So, through alot of tears this evening, I write to ask you to pray for a miracle for our Hopey. I think it is time for one. Tomorrow, it is our prayer, the doctor's report will be she will NOT need a third open heart surgery afterall. This is our most heartfelt prayer, and we'd like for you to join us. Ultimately, we have learned through some pretty hard knocks, we are not in control. We have tried desperately to be in control for 4 years, and it hasn't worked for us. So, if the report again comes back negative for our little angel, I will remember that old bagworm and still believe.

Thank you in advance for your prayers! Please share our request with any prayer warriors you know who would want the opportunity to pray......Loads of Love from:

Melanie, Chappy, Caleb, Lydia, Natalie, Hope, and Charlie Hollis