Hope

One of my favorite poems is Emily Dickinson's HOPE IS A THING WITH FEATHERS THAT PERCHES ON THE SOUL.  I love the imagery in it, that hope is this little bird that comes to sit on your shoulder.  You have to be ready for it, quiet and still.  A bird is not going to just fly in for a landing in the midst of chaos.  If you are lucky enough for it to happen, you need to be waiting for it.

I think, too, that having Hope takes courage.  It's risky to keep believing something better will come around.  I mean, what if you're wrong?  Then what?

Eternal doubt keeps us from being quiet and waiting for Hope to show up.  It's hard, this waiting. 

Today was a rallying day, of sorts.  Folks from across the country to are affected by Type 1 Diabetes showed their Hope for a cure by either wearing the word on their clothing, or writing it on their hands.  I know medical science is making great strides, and that things for folks with T1D are much better now than they were then, but having hope for a cure - real, strong hope - takes a lot of effort.  When you are concerned with boluses and blood counts, carbs, making sure your son or daughter is healthy, knowing that at any moment the bottom could drop out and your child could end up another horrifying statistic, the noise of is all is deafening.  It's hard to have HOPE during those time.

So we have to STOP the Chaos for a while.  We have to be active in our fear, take charge of it and put it in its place.  Because Hope is real, and Hope is so tightly tied to Faith that they are nearly synonymous.  And it is so HARD to have faith all the time when things are going south.  You begin to ask those unanswerable questions, the ones that, when heard spoken by someone else, sound self-pitying; the ones that look like "why ME?" 

If we can truly stop the chaos, if we can make the effort to calm down, allow peacefulness to wash over us, then maybe, just maybe, we can being to see Hope again.  And soon, when amazing things are ready to happen, we will be ready to have them land softly on our shoulders.