Show Your Hope!

The Horizon

There are times when in life where the landscape is so dark, so bleak and so unwelcoming that you could never envision even the tiniest speck of light being born within it.

What is it about the darkness that we fear?

Is it the helplessness that suffocates your spirit?

Is it the emptiness that you feel when it surrounds you?

Is it the deafening silence often found within?

Is it the unending view of nothingness that deprives us of daring to dream??

What is it that soaks our soul with a breathless and desperate longing during these times?

It is Hope.

Hope that tomorrow will be better.

Hope that, somehow – somewhere within the darkness, someone will find you and grab your hand and be with you through it all.

Hope that, no matter how helpless you feel, there is always someone there willing to help you find your way.

Hope that the silence will be broken by the sounds of love.

Hope that the landscape will suddenly blossom and flourish with a blinding fierceness beyond your wildest dreams.

Hope that, within you, you can give birth to a glimmer of light that you can nurture, grow, and release to extinguish the darkness that has enveloped you for so long.

Hope.

Yes, Hope.

You see, Hope and I have been on a journey.  One of many ups and downs…

Sometimes, I’ve even doubted that Hope was anything other than a desperate plea for sanity during desperate times.  I’ve wondered if it truly could exist outside of my heart.  I’ve had many nights that I’ve held onto it by a thread…dangling precariously close to the edge of letting the darkness consume me.

Yes, Hope and I know each other well.

The thing about Hope is that you have to be willing to have it in order to be touched by it.

If you don’t allow yourself to have Hope, then you can’t be carried by the strength within it.

If you don’t trust in the power of Hope, then you’ll never experience it.

If you don’t release your fears to make room for Hope, it will never reside in you.

These past few years have been often dark and scary for me in so many ways….

It is so hard to truly express the things I’ve felt in the depths of my being, but I could sum it up by saying that I was was in a tug of war between Hope and Fear.

Between the financial challenges, the emotional heartache, the medical challenges (the changes in my body and the changes that my children and other family members have faced) and the spiritual challenges – that tug of war has been, at times, truly painful,  overwhelming, heartbreaking, and often suffocating.

There is nothing worse than having your body fail you while you watch those you love struggle, suffer, and fall down.  If you add the emotional toll that takes as well as the financial toll, the weight is crushing.

On top of all that, you still have to function – the demands never change even when your life does.  You have to find a way to continue on, to make ends meet, to hold it together, and to do more than ‘survive‘ – you have to find a way to LIVE.  AND….the only way to do that is to have HOPE.

But here’s where the blessing arrives…despite the continued challenges we face, the horizon is finally in our view and it is BEAUTIFUL, INSPIRING, and BREATHTAKING!

While I still have medical challenges – there is finally a (medical) stability within that has given me a reprieve from the hospitalizations, and the children have a solid medical team and we are making significant progress (though our greatest challenges with Sasha still exist).  For the first time since 2010, I feel like I can finally catch my breath and not just ‘tread water‘ – but actually swim to the shore.  Don’t get me wrong, the road is still tough, overwhelming, scary, frustrating, and crushing at times, but we have found our ‘Room to Breathe.’

It’s been a long journey for our family, one that is not over – one that will always throw darkness our way…but, as long as we have HOPE, we will always have a light that will dwell within the horizon of our hearts…and as long as we have that – the darkness will never overcome us.

There is more to come….so much good, so much that’s exciting….stay tuned!

Love and Light,

Stefani