Hope

I struggle more with my mood on rainy days.

I also don’t do as well in the winter as I do in other seasons.

Winter is not my friend, and I am not even going to try to pretend I want it to be today.

I know I’m not alone in that, and I have written about these things before, many times.

Today has been so unappealing, as far as the weather goes.

We are under flash flood warnings and have been all day.

The rain has poured in buckets, as if there are giants above us who can’t control their bladders. (Perhaps they also gave birth to babies who exceeded what could be considered a comfortable birthweight — as if there is such a thing.)

I can picture them now, holding their giant bellies as they squeeze their thighs together in a vain attempt to keep the flow from emptying inappropriately.

The chagrin on their faces as their bladders betray them and explode with excessive theatrics would be quite the sight to see.

But . . . once you smash that bladder to oblivion, it isn’t ever quite the same again. (Sorry, fellas, don’t mean to make you gag.)

So, my flight of fancy may have had the opposite effect of cheering me up. Now all I can think about is buckets of pee being poured on my head.

Anyway . . .

I have been bummed out today. The clouds are so thick and the rain so heavy that it has been almost as dark as nighttime inside my house, and I am a huge fan of open windows and curtains pulled back so I can bask in natural light, even when I am forced to be inside so I can work.

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The maximum level of light that pulling my curtains back let in today was the equivalent of a nightlight gasping its death throes, on its last leg.

Giving up and dying out.

“Sometimes the most healing thing to do is remind ourselves over and over and over, other people feel this too.” — Andrea Gibson

When reminding myself I’m not alone in my dislike of such weather did not help much at all, I decided to revisit yesterday’s weather instead.

It’s nice to think about how lovely it is that spring will be here before we know it (on my side of the world, at least).

My daffodils didn’t get the memo that it isn’t spring yet, and at least half of the ones that I have in my flowerbeds have decided to bloom.

They spent all day yesterday dancing in the pleasant breeze and thrusting their cheerfully yellow heads toward the sun as it bathed them in its beauty.

I have an obsession with taking pictures of flowers, so naturally, I had to snap a couple shots of my unruly babies out there, one of which I used at the beginning of this article. (Ignore the birdseed everywhere — I have yet to succeed in teaching my birds manners.)

As I looked at them, I thought about how much hope was involved in them blooming.

I realize flowers just do what they do, and I am likely overreaching, but to me, they are a symbol of hope.

Hope that there is still beauty between the episodes of darkness and cold.

Hope that we can all lie dormant at times, but that doesn’t mean we won’t bloom again.

Hope that even if we choose the wrong time to share our beauty with the world and it ends badly for us, we will get the chance to bloom again. (Those poor daffodils are not doing well in today’s storms, and there is a hard freeze coming in tonight.)

Hope is never lost.

Hope can be dormant at times.

Hope may feel hard to connect with during some life chapters.

But it is always there.

Life is filled with hope, if we just allow (or force, depending on the day) ourselves to look for it.

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air…but only for one second without hope.”
― Hal Lindsey

It is when we become convinced that all hope is gone that we risk losing everything.

So, take the time to meditate on the things that give you hope — your faith, family, future goals — whatever it may be.

Do it now, today.

Do it every day.

Keep hope alive, and in so doing, you can help save your own life, and perhaps even someone else’s as well.

Peace and love, y’all. ❤

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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