Daring to Hope

   I love books.  Our home is overflowing with them. I seem to always have a bookmark tucked between the pages of a classic that I have been reading aloud to my children.  And the pictures books; overflowing shelves of silly and sweet stories that we have memorized but continue to read everyday.  Reference books...every topic and time period.  Our homeschool library has collected them all over the years.  But, even though I am always reading, it is very rare for me to be lost in a book.  A book just for me.

   I recently picked up Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis for my oldest daughter because it was on her biography reading list for this school year.  It has been on my wishlist for a long time and I swept it away as soon as it arrived.

   It is the story of a young woman who left her comfortable American life and travels to Uganda to serve and love the poorest of the poor. She then became the mother to a houseful of African girls and started a ministry to help educate and empower the people of Uganda.

   Her story has pulled at my heart so deeply because I have always dreamed of serving in Africa, but I know my heart would be so torn and I would just want to bring all the children home with me!  Her story is inspiring and I think I talked about it to everyone I saw that week while I was reading it.

   I was so excited to learn that she had continued her story in her new book, Daring to Hope: Finding God's Goodness in the Broken and the Beautiful.

   The story opens with a scene from Katie's kitchen.  I had to laugh as she described the scene of children running through as she is washing dishes and the trail of muddy footprints that they leave behind.  Here she stands at her kitchen window, and while her backyard view is African soil and mine is an American farmhouse, I felt such a kindred spirit with her.  She is just a mother trying to do her best.  Trying to show love in the most unlovely places.  She cooks and serves and kisses skinned knees.  She says she lives this ordinary life, though we all see it as so much more.

 Many years have passed between her first and second books, and while I read them only weeks apart, she instantly matured in between the pages.  Her story is not an easy one to write.  She shares the heartache and pain of great losses.  She is honest in her doubt and wrestled with God when her prayers were not answered in the way she had hoped.  And so much of her story is my story even though our lives are half a world apart.

  Her story is a beautiful reminder that God is still with us in the wrestling and that His plans are always for our good even when we don't understand.




*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.