Hope Quotes

I just finished reading 'The Christmas Hope' by Donna VanLiere. She is the author of 'The Christmas Shoes' which is now a movie....and a song too!
It was filled with awesome quotes that I just felt I had to post here and discuss. Before I get to that though I wanted to point out that I've added my entire TTTS history and journey on the very first posting on this blog...in August. I wanted to be sure that everyone who was looking to find our story could as I am planning to shut down the caring bridge site that I posted it on soon.
Hope you find these as inspiring and insightful as I did:

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. - Vaclav Havel
I never realized what Hope really meant despite living by this quote last winter until I read this the other day. I was so full of hope I guess...certain that it would and will make sense some day. And 'some days' that is hard to accept but all in all I think I am doing a good job.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. - Martin Luther King Jr.
So very true...and so easy to do. I was in this mode at times, especially before we knew that Cameron was going to be okay and then again right after my water broke. But then I'd feel him move, I'd catch my reflection in the mirror...my large tummy and glowing skin, I'd hear one of my older boys laugh or say something adorable...like I love you Mom!...and it would all be okay..not great but okay.

Hope never abandons you; you abandon it. - George Weinberg
Speaks for itself...and see comments on last quote....kind of one in the same.

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else. - Elie Wiesel
Did she read my mind??? This is exactly where I am at. I figure God has given me this loss for a reason, he's given me grief for a reason and he's given me Hope for a reason. I don't know for sure what it is. I know that I am desperate to find a focus for my grief and to come up with some way to make all that we lost and all that we learned and gained, something that will bring attention to the need for better monitoring and testing http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
of identical twin pregnancies as well as raising funds for research, treatment, support and care of those going through it. I've got some ideas but seem to lack the focus to move ahead with them....but I'll get there, I know I will. And this leads me to my next quote...

You can't help everybody; but you can help a few. It's that few that God will hold us accountable for. - Bob Pierce

These are the hardest times, especially when those who are younger than you take their leave, and there are times when I forget and permit myself to think that I am in the midst of death. But this is not so. It is life that surrounds me. Life. Life that is meant to be lived, its riches to be extracted. No, the Lord's promise is not for those who give up, but for those who forge ahead... - Leonora Wood
This is so true. God did not wish us to give up and die when life gets tough. It is at those times that He is there, picking us up, dusting us off and moving us ahead. Life is for the living, we can't change who's gone before us but we change how we live before we go. My son died before his time, he died before I got to hold him, touch him, kiss him.....but not before I got to love him. There is no way that such an innocent being would wish for me to be in Heaven with him instead of here with his twin brother.

....each day of the journey is precious, yours and mine - we must strive to make it a masterpiece. Each day, once gone, is gone forever. - John Wooden
The day Cameron was baptized by my dear friend Theresa she did an amazing job of including Cole in the service by giving a sermon on worrying. It is so hard not to worry, it is so hard not to focus on the future and where you are going. But you can't focus on the unknown because if you do you lose sight of the present and you miss out on what is with you right now. Once a day is gone it is gone forever. I felt my pregnancy was like that. I worried so much about how I would deal with being the mom of two newborn babies and of the stresses that brought that I didn't appreciate the miracles inside of me. I noticed all the growth, the movements and the wonderment of their little bodies on the ultrasound machine but I did nothing to remember those moments or live in them. I couldn't take that back once Cole was gone, it was too late to take pictures of my belly then, too late to start writing about how I felt about them and the dreams I had. You'd think I would have learned but when my water broke and I was rushed back to Toronto and then London I didn't live in the moment and enjoy Cameron's movements and life, I stressed and worried. I have no pictures of the places I called home for 8 weeks of my life or of the doctors that saved my son, took care of me, welcomed my boys into the world.
I needed to put those worries with God and let Him look after them...it's His job.
And so I try my best to live in the present with my family. I try to only look at today and all the wonderful things they do today....not what they aren't doing yet compared to others and not most importantly, I try not to live in the past, in the world of 'what if'. Those days can't be changed,they are gone forever.