Category: Hope Blog

Heartaches hurt more at night. Everyone from eight years old to eighty years old knows this. Fears are more terrifying, dread more suffocating when darkness falls. There is an isolation that comes in the night as one by one our friends and family drift to sleep, the phone goes silent, the house grows still and we are left alone with our thoughts. We can feel abandoned. Disarmed. Vulnerable. Night can also bring irrationality. Fatigue wraps its fingers around our minds, slipping past our mental barriers and leading us easily into captivity. We drift into thoughts we wouldn’t allow ourselves to…

March is the month when we begin to believe that the flowers will win. Winter may continue to lash out with its ice and snow; but in March, hope takes root. The flowers will win. The sun will triumph. Even on cold mornings and chilly evenings, the wind cannot help but repeat its message: “Spring is coming; all will be well. Spring is coming…” A Reminder As I sit and watch the world once more begin tumbling into its spring-time routines. I smile, remembering the impossibility that spring seemed to be just a couple of weeks ago. Buried in the…

How has your year been so far? It is sometimes amazing how much can happen in such a short time. How quickly a new year can grow old. Dreams, hopes and resolutions can be eroded in a day, or in just one or two sleepless nights. For those of you who have already felt pain in this new year and are looking to the months ahead wondering how you will manage to make it through, I want to draw you aside for a moment. I want you to come with me. There is a mountain peak in the book of…

In times of vulnerability there is nothing more comforting than to be told there is a plan. I remember so well the first few days following the discovery of my daughter Colette’s brain tumor. Within twenty-four hours of first medical contact, we had fallen from “This may be bad acid reflux…” to “some kind of seizure…” to a cyst on the brain to finally a large, life-threatening tumor. It felt as if we were being led deeper and deeper into the darkness. There in the blackness, how welcome it was to hear the calm, clear directions of those wiser than…

Christmas is on its way, each day drawing nearer. Ornaments are being hung, lights are being strung. One by one the radio stations are bowing to the inevitable and Christmas carols fill the air. As you listen to the songs – the majestic ones, the silly ones and the classic ones – I know there can be some songs that have a tendency to cut those who have had a year of heartache. I know that for many this past year has involved hurt. There have been setbacks. There has been loss. You have seen things, endured things, and are…