HOPE

I opened my eyes to dreary-teary dawn.  "I don't know why I have to cry sometimes.  I don know why I have to sigh sometimes" blended into the sun-less morning.  What do I call a sigh held so long and running so deeply that it forces me to exhale? A guttural moan.  Left with the imminent decision---to get up or crawl under the bed---I just lay there.  "The world is too much with us, late and soon.. You're right, William Wordsworth! Still, what to do?

I couldn't hide behind tired excuses or bromides. Nor could illness be a subterfuge.  Nor exhaustion, toothache, or sustained loneliness.  Nothing.  Except for a sense of vulnerability and loss that drizzled on and over me.  Like water on cement.  Still, it makes no sense to ask the rhetorical "why." The song answers its own question.  Again, stay in bed or get under it?

Mother's spirit responded. "Give thanks in everything," she'd quote; then, "Say 'Thank You, Jesus," she'd insist.  Until I unclenched teeth and let the words ease out.   "Say it again," she'd prod.  Grudgingly, I obeyed.  That kind of direction haunted me from childhood and even after I "got grown."   Alright.  I sit up. look around, and see nothing has changed.  That's the problem! I had gone to bed feeling forlorn, slept fitfully, and more than likely dreamed who-knows-what.  

But, I'm up.  What to do next? Decide: it's going to be a good (at least a so-so day)  day or it looms as a dismal failure.  Hmm.  Mother's voice again intrudes, "The only hope we have is in Christ Jesus...The only one to help us in this world of turmoil. Though Satan's foes oppress and our hears seem distressed, Oh, but we have this hope, and it's in Jesus."  Another deep sigh-turned-moan.  Only one choice makes sense, really.

I choose hope.  I opt to remember countless adventures, wonderful days, rewarding moments, and precious memories (how they linger).  Things can't remain as bad, I deem if the sun lightening the sky serves as a predictor.  Where did that come from? Deep in the recesses of childhood, I'd ingested, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."  I believed then, which compels me to believe now. "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he won't depart from it"(Proverbs 2:6).

I reject strength-draining defeatism, impotence generated by irrational thoughts.  I cannot afford victimization; it's too costly.  A dear Evangelist-friend repeatedly admonishes, "All you need is a made-up mind!" It's that simple.  Evangelist echoed the apostle James who warned, "...a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."  So, there it is! I choose hope.

"I don't know why I have to cry sometimes,
I don't know why, Lord, my poor heart bleeds sometimes.
But there's gonna be a perfect day,
Trouble get outta my way.  I don't know why but I'll find out by and by."

I don't know why, Lord, my poor heart bleeds sometimes