Hi Guys! My name is Audra and I live in the Indianapolis area. I am a wife and mother of four beautiful children, two through adoption and two through my belly. I also have six babies that are patiently waiting for me in Heaven due to multiple miscarriages. I often tell people that I wouldn’t change a thing, that each and every one of those miscarriages was for a reason and I am thankful they brought me to the place I am at now. I have grown closer to God and my faith in Him is stronger. Reaching that peace didn’t happen right away, it took a lot of time, tears and a whole lot of Jesus. After my last miscarriage I sat in my car with a very important decision to make. To give up or hold on to that glimmer of hope. Through the tears I held on to the promise that Jesus had better things coming. It has now become my mission to help others find that hope during their own hardships. We have all heard the saying, “Faith, hope and Love and the greatest of these is love.” It comes from the verse, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three: the the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13: 13) We hear this a lot at weddings while two people are joyfully coming together as one. Love is so important that God made a commandment for it; love your neighbor as yourself. He loves us, therefore we are called to love. Faith is also very important and it receives a lot of attention. We always need faith. We are to have faith and share our faith. But what about hope? Ever wonder why my blog is called Hope Matters? Well, because it does. I believe that it has taken a back seat to Love and Faith. I’m not saying that it is more important than these two, but it is just as important as these two. That is why hope is encased in-between faith and love, hope is what anchors Love & Faith. I was on a boat a few weeks back with my family and my dad pulled into a little cove so we could swim, relax and eat our lunch in the amazing Florida sunshine. If we didn’t put down an anchor out boat would have been tossed around by the huge waves and we would have eventually would have been pushed into the sandy shoreline and the sand and rocks could have scratched our boat. With the anchor we were able to still feel the waves but not be moved more than the anchor allowed us. Hope is like that anchor. Yes, love and faith can still exist without hope but hope keeps us grounded on what is important, Jesus. We need hope. Hope Matters. So many times, people forget about hope. It is the middle child that people assume will always be there, always listen to you and not make a fuss. The middle child is usually the laid back one because the first born received all the parent’s attention in the beginning and the baby is always craving their attention. Hope sits there just waiting to be seen, used and heard. We need hope. We need it to fuel our reason to live, to go after that dream, to keep doing what we are meant to do, and to love all. God has called me to write and that scares me. I didn’t go to school for this and it is very vulnerable place to be in. I know God wants me to share his words of Faith, Hope and love and I will do just that. I will keep moving and keep learning every day. I don’t know what God has in store for my writing but all I know is that I need to keep writing. I have no agenda only the call to write. Yes, I have dreams, God size dreams, that can only be met by God’s grace and not my own doing. If one day I reach my dreams, it is not anything I did on my own, but ONLY because of God’s doing. That is my hope.