Ashley Tello's husband was mountain biking a few weeks ago, crashed and broke his femur. At the hospital they prepared for surgery the next day, but that night he began having seizures. He soon slipped into a coma and they discovered fat from the broken femur had gotten into his blood stream and lodged in his brain. He is now awake, but his brain is still healing.
She is keeping a blog to update his friends and loved ones on his progress.
My mom used to teach us, "Consider what you pray for. Do you want what you think is best for you, or do you want what Heavenly Father wants for you?"
Ashley captures that concept beautifully and expresses her thoughts so well. She is so optimistic and inspiring--this is one of this articles that I want to share with everyone. She agreed to let me share her post on my blog.
Thoughts - Hope FOR vs. Hope IN
by Ashley Tello
Hope has long been one of the most difficult principles of the gospel for me to understand and live. The way I use to see it, hoping hurt.
I always felt I was subjecting myself to a roller coaster of emotions whenever I let myself hope for something because there was always the chance that what I hoped for would not come to fruition.
After Beto and I lost a pregnancy early on in 2017, I struggled with the desire to get pregnant again. While the euphoria of giving birth to Hayden wiped away all of the hard parts of being pregnant the first time around, there was no euphoria of holding a baby in my arms for the first time to wipe away the pains of miscarriage and I struggled with the desire to go through it all again.
Then, when we finally decided to have another baby, we struggled to get pregnant. With every month that passed, I felt like my heart was going to break each time I realized that a baby wasn't on the way. I hoped for a baby with all of my heart, but that hope only made the heartbreak more difficult to bear each and every time.
And then a prompting came: before I could really have hope, I needed to study it.
So, I went to the scriptures and began to study. The first thing I found was in the Guide to the Scriptures where hope is defined as "The confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness." That sounded reasonable. I could confidently expect to be blessed with a baby... Couldn't I?
But then I began to read all of the scriptures that speak of hope and I found something interesting: all of the verses spoke of hope IN, not hope FOR or hope THAT. Nowhere did it indicate that the principle of hope meant that I could hope for something and that it would magically come about like a wish granted by a genie.
Instead, the scriptures teach us to have hope in Christ.
And it turns out that having hope IN Christ is completely different from having hope FOR a certain outcome.
When we hope FOR something, we unknowingly try to subject God to our personal timeline. I was hoping for a baby each month. I wanted to be pregnant "right now", and whenever my desired timeline wasn't met, I was devasted.
It hurt.
And yet, I had received a promise from God that I would be the mother of children (plural). There was no reason to doubt that God would not eventually grant me that promised blessing. The hurt came when I involved my own timeline.
Hope IN Christ, on the other hand, is all about handing over control of the timeline and the outcome. We no longer hope for this or that, we hope in Him and the promises that he has made to us. And here are just a couple of the incredible promises he has given us:
1. D&C 90:24 – Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good
2. 2 Nephi 26:24 - He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world
In other words, everything that Christ does is for our good and for the benefit of the world.
Everything.
That means that his timeline and his outcomes are what we should want – not just because we are supposed to submit our will to His, but because His timing and His outcomes are actually better.
That is where hope lies.
In Christ.
Hope that He is in control. Hope that He will make all things work together for our good. Hope that whatever the outcome may be and whenever it may come about, it will bring us the greatest happiness and growth.
I prefer that kind of hope. It doesn't hurt.
With our struggle to get pregnant, I learned to have hope and faith in Christ and that his timing was best. I could have a confident expectation that He would bless us with another child… when the time was right.
And it turns out that if I had gotten pregnant when I wanted to get pregnant, I would have gone into labor right around the time of Beto’s accident.
Apparently, God knew more about our timeline than we did. J
But that trial wasn’t just about the timeline. It was also about the outcome: I finally understood hope. Real hope. So, when the neurologists came to speak to me after Beto fell into a coma, I was armed with the power of hope in Christ.
Because of the unpredictable nature of the brain – not to mention how extremely rare fat emboli syndrome is – the doctors prefaced every potentially positive prognosis with phrases like, “We don’t want to give you false hope.” and “It’s best not to set expectations about your husband’s recovery.”
They knew that if I was hoping for a certain outcome, the emotional roller coaster of recovery (or the lack thereof) could be too much to handle. I couldn’t hope for too much without the threat of having that hope dashed into a million pieces every time there was bad news.
After the third or fourth doctor warned me not to get my hopes up for any specific outcome or timeline, I smiled and told him, “Don’t worry, I know there is a difference between hoping for something and having hope in Christ.”
I don’t know if he understood what I was trying to say, but let me try and say it here. Real hope comes down to three things:
1. Understanding God’s promises: In Beto’s case, not only do I have the promise that all things shall work together for our good but Beto has now received two Priesthood blessings promising a full recovery and I have had at least three separate experiences where I felt God assure me that Beto will be healed, mended, and restored to me.
2. Accepting that God is in control of the timeline and that is for the best: While I know that Beto will eventually have a full recovery, I have absolutely no idea how long that will take or what the process will be like. So far, Beto has blown past the doctor’s prediction that he would be in a coma for at least two months and reduced that time to just less than two weeks. He’s a fighter.
But we still have a ways to go. I feel that Beto is making incredible progress every day, but whatever the timeline may be, I know that God is in control and that his timing is always best (for reasons I may not understand now or ever).
3. Accepting that God is in control of the outcome and that is for the best: I understand that a “full recovery” likely does not mean that everything will be as it was before. Things will be different, but different doesn’t mean bad. In fact, hope in Christ means that whatever the outcome may be, it will be better than what we could have ever obtained without this experience.
In the end, hope in Christ has helped me understand and accept that my family is in God’s hands and that is exactly where we need to be to achieve the growth and happiness He has in store for us.
I couldn’t imagine anything better than that.
I always felt I was subjecting myself to a roller coaster of emotions whenever I let myself hope for something because there was always the chance that what I hoped for would not come to fruition.
After Beto and I lost a pregnancy early on in 2017, I struggled with the desire to get pregnant again. While the euphoria of giving birth to Hayden wiped away all of the hard parts of being pregnant the first time around, there was no euphoria of holding a baby in my arms for the first time to wipe away the pains of miscarriage and I struggled with the desire to go through it all again.
Then, when we finally decided to have another baby, we struggled to get pregnant. With every month that passed, I felt like my heart was going to break each time I realized that a baby wasn't on the way. I hoped for a baby with all of my heart, but that hope only made the heartbreak more difficult to bear each and every time.
And then a prompting came: before I could really have hope, I needed to study it.
So, I went to the scriptures and began to study. The first thing I found was in the Guide to the Scriptures where hope is defined as "The confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness." That sounded reasonable. I could confidently expect to be blessed with a baby... Couldn't I?
But then I began to read all of the scriptures that speak of hope and I found something interesting: all of the verses spoke of hope IN, not hope FOR or hope THAT. Nowhere did it indicate that the principle of hope meant that I could hope for something and that it would magically come about like a wish granted by a genie.
Instead, the scriptures teach us to have hope in Christ.
And it turns out that having hope IN Christ is completely different from having hope FOR a certain outcome.
When we hope FOR something, we unknowingly try to subject God to our personal timeline. I was hoping for a baby each month. I wanted to be pregnant "right now", and whenever my desired timeline wasn't met, I was devasted.
It hurt.
And yet, I had received a promise from God that I would be the mother of children (plural). There was no reason to doubt that God would not eventually grant me that promised blessing. The hurt came when I involved my own timeline.
Hope IN Christ, on the other hand, is all about handing over control of the timeline and the outcome. We no longer hope for this or that, we hope in Him and the promises that he has made to us. And here are just a couple of the incredible promises he has given us:
1. D&C 90:24 – Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good
2. 2 Nephi 26:24 - He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world
In other words, everything that Christ does is for our good and for the benefit of the world.
Everything.
That means that his timeline and his outcomes are what we should want – not just because we are supposed to submit our will to His, but because His timing and His outcomes are actually better.
That is where hope lies.
In Christ.
Hope that He is in control. Hope that He will make all things work together for our good. Hope that whatever the outcome may be and whenever it may come about, it will bring us the greatest happiness and growth.
I prefer that kind of hope. It doesn't hurt.
With our struggle to get pregnant, I learned to have hope and faith in Christ and that his timing was best. I could have a confident expectation that He would bless us with another child… when the time was right.
And it turns out that if I had gotten pregnant when I wanted to get pregnant, I would have gone into labor right around the time of Beto’s accident.
Apparently, God knew more about our timeline than we did. J
But that trial wasn’t just about the timeline. It was also about the outcome: I finally understood hope. Real hope. So, when the neurologists came to speak to me after Beto fell into a coma, I was armed with the power of hope in Christ.
Because of the unpredictable nature of the brain – not to mention how extremely rare fat emboli syndrome is – the doctors prefaced every potentially positive prognosis with phrases like, “We don’t want to give you false hope.” and “It’s best not to set expectations about your husband’s recovery.”
They knew that if I was hoping for a certain outcome, the emotional roller coaster of recovery (or the lack thereof) could be too much to handle. I couldn’t hope for too much without the threat of having that hope dashed into a million pieces every time there was bad news.
After the third or fourth doctor warned me not to get my hopes up for any specific outcome or timeline, I smiled and told him, “Don’t worry, I know there is a difference between hoping for something and having hope in Christ.”
I don’t know if he understood what I was trying to say, but let me try and say it here. Real hope comes down to three things:
1. Understanding God’s promises: In Beto’s case, not only do I have the promise that all things shall work together for our good but Beto has now received two Priesthood blessings promising a full recovery and I have had at least three separate experiences where I felt God assure me that Beto will be healed, mended, and restored to me.
2. Accepting that God is in control of the timeline and that is for the best: While I know that Beto will eventually have a full recovery, I have absolutely no idea how long that will take or what the process will be like. So far, Beto has blown past the doctor’s prediction that he would be in a coma for at least two months and reduced that time to just less than two weeks. He’s a fighter.
But we still have a ways to go. I feel that Beto is making incredible progress every day, but whatever the timeline may be, I know that God is in control and that his timing is always best (for reasons I may not understand now or ever).
3. Accepting that God is in control of the outcome and that is for the best: I understand that a “full recovery” likely does not mean that everything will be as it was before. Things will be different, but different doesn’t mean bad. In fact, hope in Christ means that whatever the outcome may be, it will be better than what we could have ever obtained without this experience.
In the end, hope in Christ has helped me understand and accept that my family is in God’s hands and that is exactly where we need to be to achieve the growth and happiness He has in store for us.
I couldn’t imagine anything better than that.
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