Six years ago, today, our sweet Elle left us to return to her Heavenly Father for a time. In the past six years I have felt more joy, sorrow, peace and hope than I would've thought possible.
Throughout Elle's life I felt an overwhelming sense of hope. Since Elle's death I have become fascinated with this concept of hope. Much more elusive than faith and yet just as important in the trifecta of "faith, hope, and charity" I have struggled to understand why I was given this gift.
This past conference Elder Uchtdorf spoke on The infinte power of hope. As I realized the subject matter of his talk I was touched as my prayers and study of the past six years were answered. In his talk he defined hope as "Not the knowledge, but rather the abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to us. It is confidence that if we live according to God's laws...we will receive desired blessings in the future. It is believing and expecting that our prayers will be answered." Throughout her life, we prayed desperately for Elle to recieve a new heart. And I felt hope, even confidence that she would. I now see that what I felt, and was blessed with, was an assurance that God was listening to our prayers, my prayers. The tender and pleading prayers of a mother that her precious daughter be made whole.
Although those prayers were not answered in the time or manner that I desperately desired I have no doubt that they will be answered. "No matter how bleak the chapter of our lives may look today, because of the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we may hope and be assured that the ending of the book of our lives will exceed our grandest expectations. 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heard of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."
The next time I see Elle she will be whole. My daughter's heart will be perfect and she will be mine, she will be mine forever.
This is what I have hope for, this is what I have hope in; the atonement and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. A miracle so glorious, so eternal that it encompasses all other miracles and allows me to "make a courageous decision to hope even when everything around us contradicts this hope...as one writer expressed 'in the depth of winter we find within us the invincible summer."
