Some Thoughts:

What is it about being discouraged that stops you from even trying to do anything? —From trying to move forward. Some people seem to be driven by a challenge. They seem to foresee the incredible feeling of winning in spite of the odds, and they charge ahead without the hindering fear of failure. Others seem to be tainted with the stain of defeat upon defeat, until they begin to pile each new challenge or problem on top of the last. It becomes a formidable tower that represents all of the things that they never did, can’t do, or are fearful of. A compilation of unanswered prayers, hopes deferred and heart sickness that colors every day in tea stained hues of depression.

Have you ever felt like you just were not normal? Like everyone else that you meet has somehow been invited to a party, but you are fated to remain on the outside. You are able to see the potential in every man, but for yourself you see an unmovable cap. Like you’ve been prevented by a greater force than you’re capable of prevailing against from ever moving past a certain level. No advice that you have ever received has been suitable to your specific plight, and after years of valiant hope you feel your fingers slipping of of the optimistic ledge you’ve attempted to hold so tightly to.

It’s a surreal feeling to know that you are going to fall. —To know that you indeed are falling… And yet you can do nothing to stop yourself from sailing away as the stronger winds of life finally come to take you to a place that you’ve fought all your life to never go. That place where your hope has failed, and the future seems like a long, plain and silent hallway with no door, borrowed artwork, and furniture that has been left by the last occupant. In other words, life begins to feel like a long sentence to be served. It was once full of bright years not yet consumed in which anything good could and would surely happen.

There is still something small on the inside that won’t die. Perhaps the existence of that small something drives the feeling of dissatisfaction and disappointment. That thing has not died, and though your fight has fallen silent, there is something more that won’t let you stop hoping. There are days that you curse the last shreds of hope because hope won’t let you die, but lets you live to see another day in which your hopes will not likely come to pass. Still hope says that one day they just may. You shudder because you swear that you can see a long, lonely and increasingly empty life in front of you, but hope says that better times will come. You answer that you’ve heard that line before and you won’t fall for it again… But you want to. Not only do you want to fall for it, you are secretly begging that it would be true.

What if it gets better? What if there really is a morning? Would seeing the dawn finally make a believer out of you? Would you never again be swayed by any storm? Would you hereafter be able to fight off all the voices of doubt? Would you be able to win against your own negative perception of yourself. Could you awake to find that you’re winning in this fight?

I don’t have an answer for any of those questions, but I do still have hope somewhere deep and far away. I think it sings and sometimes I can faintly hear the song. Sometimes I stifle the sound because hope stings the most when you daily face the things you hope against. They are live. They are loud. They are strong, and they have always been and seem permanent. But something in me loves the lyric to the song that hopes sings. Something in me cannot completely fall into the black hole of hopelessness. Something in me persists in searching for the door. Something in me fights with the belief that if I am falling from this ledge my feet will find the promise of solid rock. And in the end on that Rock I’ll stand.