Stubborn Hope

There is much to be said when the edges of our world are yanked out from underneath us, and what catches us is an abyss of broken dreams. This is the reality we fall into. The life we planned dissipates and what remains is not always welcome:

Stubborn Hope.

It is there when we despair. It is resented when all we want to feel is what reality has painted into our stories. We scoff at it. Question it. Mock it. Tell it to go away. But it never does. It can’t. It won’t.

There is something terrible when the sadness begins to scare you. When you forget what it feels like to breathe simple air. When trauma has kidnapped you and you wake up lost in a sea of grief. How did I get here? Who cast me out this far from shore?

The silence is haunting.

But it is also… somehow… holy?

I don’t pretend to understand how it all works. That all our sadness, all our despair, all our sufferings wear a garment not fitted with the fabric of earth.

That the Ultimate Reality became subjected to our violent yet fleeting one.

That the tears that darkened my disposition also… purified it for the Finale Where Dreams Only Come True And Can’t Be Snatched Away.

And there it is, that Stubborn Hope, often more sure than our own existence. Almost like it’s been here longer than we have known how to breathe. Almost like it feeds us a flavor that we futility search earth to replicate. It won’t leave us alone. How we resent it. How we run from it. How we could not get through tomorrow without it.

Do I dare say, against the war-torn souls of this earth, something else emerges? Stubborn Joy. A rarity but a reality. It echos rooms with laughter only known in the halls of heaven. How dare it make its presence known in the midst of the howlings of earth?

But it does. And even the angels turn around in disbelief that their melody plays even on the earth. Yes, that melody, full of innocence and void of exposure to the pain, violence, and darkness of mankind.

“How can it sing there?” they cry.

And there is another Laughter at this question. A Laughter that taught the clock to tick. And through tears that must coexist with it, he marvels that his beloved still submit to Stubborn Hope, no matter how dark it gets.

“Are your wonders known in the darkness?” Psalm 88:12

Yes. I think they are.