Called to hope and trust against the odds

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas… and frankly a lot more. Aren’t you? I have a lot of dreams and for sure often I forget to be thankful for those that have been realized as I slug my way through the still-“advent” of my adult life as a 32-year-old-never-been-married-still-wanting-children-woman.

I look around my group of friends and acquaintances and I am struck deeply that so many of us share the struggle of Manoah and his wife, Zechariah and Elizabeth. In the very literal sense I see so many couples suffering through infertility. But it’s a wider struggle than that, a struggle of feeling born for a purpose and just not being able to live that out, or at least yet. It might be the sure knowledge of being made for a job that hasn’t come, being called to marriage and still being single, wanting to buy a house and not having the funds yet, or even just wanting to live out the image of adulthood that formed in your mind during childhood.

This image of a womb waiting to be filled is everywhere in Scripture and in life, both literally and figuratively. Not only is God with us, longing with us, suffering with us, in this pain and time of waiting, but He also made this time for us. In this time of difficult longing our appetite is deepening, our need made greater until finally we are open enough, hungry enough, to receive all the immense and sheer joy of Emmanuel: God with us, the fullness. We are called to hope against all hope and trust against all the odds that God will provide and fulfill our deepest desire if only we keep our sights set on that Star of Heaven.

Tricia Frey is the Director for Teen Faith Formation at St. Mary of the Falls Parish, working in ministry for middle schoolers, high school teens, and young adults and a regular writer for The Living Person.