An Elusive Hope

He has slipped into that terribly angry depression, the one where dying would not be unwelcome.  He said there was no reason to hope and nothing in his life that might justify it.  Nothing ever got more than "almost better," and each time he had wanted to begin to think maybe this was the time "better" might last it was the time something happened to undo it.  It did not have to be something tragic -- just enough to signal the foolishness of hope.  Hope had, in fact, been the way he knew sadness was coming.  It followed as readily on his wary beginning to trust, and each time he would fall so low into it that even drawing even with life was harder to do.

Life can be that way.  It can seem to be more penalty than gift, an experience to endure.  There is so little to celebrate and hope is an elusive thing.  While we may need to most as life seems worst, the well from which we draw can seem to run dry.  Hope is hard and at times I have wondered was it more pretense than anything else.  In his life, and sometimes in all lives, we sense more pain than anything else, so little basis to trust that God or anyone else is playing fair.

So far the depression has yielded and life can be renewed, for this little while longer.  I would hope it can, but hope is one of those individual things that restores only one life at a time.  It can be spoken of but it cannot be lent, and so we can share his sense of what is so real in his life, and wish it were different; that maybe next time it will last when hoping becomes a choice.