Hope is tricky to hold when despair is present.

As the hospital stay continues to get further in the rearview mirror we continue to frequent doctors office’s and test appointments.  The reports and tests stack up creating a mountain of evidence.  A mountain of dreary grayness with the occasional slicing light breaking through.  I am challenged daily in my faith, in my hope.  It’s a different feeling when you have to honestly consider what you’re hoping for?  So often we base our hope on a realistic foundation of facts and knowledge.  I am guilty of it, I am an optamistic hopeful person when the doctors reports and belief line up with my hope.  When the percentages tell me that my hope is justified I am a giant of faith, but hope is tougher to hold when nothing indicates that hope is justified.

According to many the opposite of hope is despair, and despair rolls in like a fog over the morning dew with no fanfare or announcement just silence.  The line between hope and despair can at times appear to melt away.  I find despair seems to linger, despair seems to have an uncanny ability to align itself with any report that comes across.  The darkness of despair drowns out the light of hope.

The Max journey is one built on hope.  Not hope found in statistics, but hope that is free of reason or justification.  That hope is hard to handle, it’s not easily duplicated nor is it easy to gain.  It’s a hope forged in that darkness of despair.  The hope that leaves scars.