Hope on a Narrow Strip of Beach

Some days, you wake up sort of feeling like a truck ran over you. Some days, life is so disorienting that you feel like you're drunk; you wander through them unfocused; clumsy; dizzy. Some days start with tears, and end with a migraine. Some days would leave you praying in the fetal position if not for God's helping hand and harness to pick you up and carry you through it.

Some days are great, and silly, and you can throw yourself into a happy new romance, and you can write fun happy blogs. Some days are full of purpose and meaning. Some days are just great, and you can be focused, and intentional, and giddy.

But sometimes life just gives you great big ups and great big downs all at the same time. And you can be a glowing ball of sparkles one day-- taking energy from anyone and everything-- and the next, feel so discouraged, and so defeated. I once found a poem by an ancient Greek female poet named Anyte that I used in a paper; it expresses the change from one to the other in a way that I think is beautiful:

No longer exalting in the swimming seas
Will I toss up my neck, rising from the depths,
Nor will I blow around the fine prow of a ship
Leaping and enjoying the figure-head.
But the sea's blue wetness threw me up on dry land
And I lie on this narrow strip of beach.


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I am having a really hard day today. Today, I wish for an angel. I need something otherworldly to sit with me and hold me and explain what I find to be so confusing. I've felt such a intoxicating high for the last couple weeks, that this return to a darkened world is brutal. Once more, I find myself bound by doubt, by fear, by uncertainty, by cynicism, by anger, by sadness, by despair. I lie on this narrow strip of beach.

But I have to hope. Tonight in my grad school class-- before I left with the migraine-- someone confessed that they worried change was impossible: that what has been will be again, and that we can't ever really hope to climb out of the ugly behaviors that have resulted in so much abuse over the centuries-- that, essentially, we are destined to them. I raised my hand and begged, through the fog of a pounding head, for a different philosophy. I have to believe we can change. I have to believe that we can progress; that we can make decisions which take morality into consideration; I have to believe that we can get better. If I don't believe that, then I have no idea what my life is about.

At the end of my terrible day, I come back to this shred, this tiny shred, of hope, and pray that it inflates, and strengthens, and pulls me up yet again. I am fallen and broken-hearted, but plead with hope to pull me up yet again. I hope in a Savior. I hope for a tomorrow that is more innocent than today, and I hope that love- that redeeming kind of love- really CAN change people. I hope that I can be better. I hope that I can forgive. I hope that love is big enough to conquer ugliness. I hope that there ultimately is a bridge to freedom and redemption and a place where the highest of hopes can be realized.

I cling to that hope today with all that I have left.