"God works while we wait."

The Baby Hope Tree

by Elisa Morgan, former president and CEO of MOPS

as printed in Thriving Family

It was December 21.  The phone rang.  The only other couple in our adoption group who hadn't yet been placed with a baby - besides us- was calling to say they finally had a child.  I hung up, feeling like I'd been shot in the chest.  No baby for us.  We'd been waiting for almost five years, and I longed to be a mother.  

I rolled up my spiritual sleeves and began to beg God for a baby by Christmas.  I set up a Christmas tree and decorated the branches with pink and blue ribbons and christened it the "Baby Hope Tree."  Every day I knelt there, pouring out my prayers.  

Then the phone rang, and I heard the hard truth that there was not going to be a baby by Christmas.  Our first child didn't come until Easter.  At last.  Our second child came two years later in a blistering July summer. 

When I look back at that 21st day of December, I realize now that my daughter was safely growing in her birth mother's womb on Christmas Day.  God was indeed answering my prayer.  He was working while I was waiting.

Every Christmas since then, we've continued to set up a Baby Hope Tree, tied with pink and blue ribbons.  In the early years, my husband and I did the work while telling our children the tale of our waiting and wanting them so much.  As they grew, they began to set up the tree themselves, Eva tying on the pink ribbons and Ethan the blue ones.  Well into their 20s today, they still come by and admire the tree, the tender reminder that God works while we wait.