Hope

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work:  You don't give up." --Anne Lamott

This morning broke crisp and cool, blue skies and sunshine.  It should have been a nice day.  I spent my morning despondent, sobbing, asking God when my life will stop going from bad to worse.  I don't know that I've ever experienced such true hopelessness before, but I certainly felt it this morning:  that gaping black hole that sucks the life out of you and makes you wonder why you have to keep breathing in the first place.  

It was a dark space.  Hopelessness is perhaps the worst 'feeling' I have ever been wracked with. It is truly horrible in a way I cannot describe. 

Even in the midst of such utter despair I did not want to give up or give in or just lay down and die.  Sure, I had a moment--a brief and wrenching moment when I asked God why he was keeping me alive if he was just going to continue torturing me, and believe me that is no exaggeration, I have been tortured in ways you cannot possibly imagine. 

And then, just like that, the moment passed.  I felt empty.  I feel empty.  But it's not a bad emptiness.  It's a waiting kind of emptiness--like I am waiting to be filled with hope and goodness. 

And there is hope--a glimmer, a flickering, a tiny light in all this darkness.  Amidst all this tragedy, despite all my tears, hope lives. 

As Anne Lamott wisely stated, "Hope begins in the dark."  And it did.  At my darkest hour, there it was.

I have hope.  Hope that some blessings will be bestowed upon me.  Maybe hope is the blessing. Hope that things will begin to work out.  Hope that something good will finally happen.  Hope that all this ugliness will be behind me now. Hope that this darkness is nearly past.

I hit bottom.  Up is the only place to go from here.  There is hope in that.  

As long as there is hope, there is life.