It's just a sliver, but I found some.

We have recently been feeling more hopeful about things and to be honest I have no idea why - maybe it's from coming off our (mostly) worry-free holiday, or maybe it's the time of year, or maybe it's just another coping mechanism to get us though the next little while - who knows??? But having this hope is actually more scary then not having any at all, cuz now our expectations have been raised, our senses are on overdrive, some of the numbness is thawing, and it feels like we will crash even harder if things don't work out.

With this renewed hope, for the first time in almost two months, I let myself dream about our boy coming home the other night - I didn't even try to stop it, I just let the dream come. It was scary to let my heart open up that far, but at the same time, as I held him in my arms and rocked him to sleep in the dream, it felt so peaceful. And the other day, for the first time in a long time, I stopped and studied one of his photos we have hanging on the fridge...I looked into his big brown eyes and wished with all my might for him to be ours forever.

The following is taken from something I posted almost one year ago about my feels of "hope":

Hope. I most often associate the word 'hope' as something positive. Synonyms for hope include expect, trust, anticipate, wish, look forward to, desire, faith - All words that imply a strong belief in a positive future.

We use the word hope so freely in day-to-day conversations - "I hope it doesn't rain today." We sometimes use the word to be rude - "I hope you aren't planning on wearing that tonight?" We also use the word for things that will probably never happen - "I hope we win the lottery." And we of course, use it for more significant events - "I hope our baby comes home."

Hope is nothing more than having a belief in something that has not happened. There is no guarantee, promise or assurance in hoping. Hope means that we are waiting on or wanting something - that something has not happened yet and there is a chance that it may not. Hope can make us vulnerable, fragile, and exposed.

So why do we bother with hope?

Hope gets us out of bed each morning. Hope is sometimes the only thing keeping us going. Hope can never let us down. If you have hope, anything is possible.

Hope is sometimes all we have...