Most of us have had seasons of darkness.  Times where we were scared, sad, lonely and felt helpless.  We may have lost our job, a loved one, a beloved fur baby, too many other things in this cruel world we live in today.  Some of us may have gone through a breakup, divorced after years of marriage, suffered an illness, or found themselves in financial trouble they could not see a way out of.  We may have suffered pain and uncertainty about the current path of our life.  All of which shrouded us in a cloud of darkness.  I’ve been in another season of darkness myself, and for far too long this time.  It has all but crippled me, one bad break after another, one heartache after another, one “oh SHIT” after another.  It’s been a rough couple of years. I am just now starting to recognize what hope really is and learning where to look for and find it.  My hope is that maybe one person reads this and finds a little hope for themselves. 

Once a cloud of darkness settles in around us, it can be hard to pull ourselves back up and into the light, to feel hopeful for a better tomorrow.  It’s especially hard when the hits just seem to keep on coming, one right after another.  The clouds get heavier, darker, thicker and it’s hard to find a way out to that silver lining everyone is talking about or to find that tiniest ray of light shining through all of the misery and despair. It feels more like a burden, a ton of weight holding us down, mind, body and spirit, leaving us with a feeling of being stuck and sinking in the quicksand we call life. It feels like no one truly understands, no one is coming to our rescue, no matter how much we may try to articulate and explain our situation to the ones we love and care about.  Trying to get someone to understand how we are feeling, just feels useless, leaving us feeling even more down and desperate. To those of us who find ourselves in the darkness, more than once, or for long periods of time, over time it can feel like a hopeless situation each and every time.  We tell ourselves we will always be down, we will always live in the darkness and there will never again be light, happiness, success, peace, comfort or security. 

It is in these times where we MUST Hope, where we must not linger our thoughts on the troubles we are facing, or the bad breaks that have come our way.  We must focus on the in between times where happiness, joy, hope and love were felt and enjoyed.  It’s easy to focus on the bad, we have a way of giving more weight and thought to the tough, unfair times in our lives.  If we can only learn to focus on the beautiful parts of our lives more, past and present, it will help the less beautiful and more traumatic times to fade away.  When we can focus on the best parts of our lives vs. the worst, that’s when we realize that even in the darkness there IS Hope.  Hope, it brings light to the darkness.  Even just a little hope can start to brighten the clouds and slowly dissipate the surrounding storms. We start to realize that our lives haven’t been all bad.  That we have come through past storms and out of the darkness on many occasions and usually came through better, stronger, more secure and confident.  Darkness may get a hold of us, but when we can learn to focus towards how we made it through past storms we thought would be impossible to survive.  This gives us the ability to understand that this storm shall pass too.

Hope is about believing in our resilience.  Believing that our tomorrow will be better than our today.  Trusting that we aren’t meant to stay down, but that we are meant to rise up, over and past our current situation.  That we are meant for much more than what may currently be in front of us. Hope gives us the power to push ourselves to create a better outcome.  Hope feeds our soul to give us strength.  The strength to pick ourselves back up when we fall, to persevere in the darkest of times.  Hope helps us imagine a better future, gives us the courage and strength to work towards that future one small step, one small victory at a time.  The more hope we have the easier it becomes to recover from our storms and manifest the life we desire and deserve.

Hope is something that is meant to be shared.  We have to speak and give hope to anyone and everyone that needs it, to those battling their own storms, even in the midst of our own troubles.  By giving hope, we actually receive a little hope of our own. Speak encouraging words, use small gestures to help the rays of hope come alive inside those who are feeling hopeless. Hope exists to lead the way forward, a beacon leading us to a better outlook and future. 

Hope is our starting point.  It can be found all around us if we only look and search with our hearts and not our minds.  Even a small butterfly is a sign of hope with its vibrant colors, the fluttering of its wings, just happily dancing around a garden of beautiful flowers, seeming to not have a care in the world, even when the winds pick up it pushes itself harder to fly through what must feel like a great storm to this small delicate creature, yet once it lands at its destination it looks and acts totally unscathed.  This lonely butterfly faces the world on its own yet seems so at ease and carefree.  If something as small as a butterfly can face this big old world and not lose its peace, that is a source of hope for us.  Just look around, you will find all kinds of examples of hope, big and small.

My point is, the vision of hope can start small.  If we focus on the tiniest feelings of it, we can build on that.  Collect each small example until it grows so bright the darkness fades away, because hope above all else does bring light to the darkness.  My wish for us all is that in times of strife, little rays of hope will shine through and keep the darkness at bay.  That hope will lead us all to live our happiest, brightest and most fulfilling life we can.  Let’s give ourselves some Grace to breathe life into hope.

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