The Healing Journey

April 25, 2024

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Is hope for everyone? No matter their age? No matter their sorrow? No matter their temperament?

When someone we love dies, it seems hope is extinguished in our soul. We don’t want to go on, and even when we do, we can see no tomorrow, certainly not a tomorrow with joy and happiness because everything we loved has been taken from us.

Sometimes it seems that hope is only a grace for the young because they have so much life ahead of them. Can someone in their 90s have hope after the one they loved dies? Or does life become a monotonous routine day to day with no hope in sight? And what of parents who have lost children? Can they hope for a better future? Or will their loss be a burden with them for the rest of their lives?

What exactly is this thing called hope? Is it nothing more than an invention designed to make us think tomorrow can be better than today even though we’re absolutely, 101 percent convinced it can’t be? Yes, hope is strange and it is counter to everything we might believe and feel about life because sometimes life seems like nothing more than an interminable succession of losses.

But it’s not. Has anyone ever told you, “You have to have hope?” Somehow it can seem so insincere and so preposterous, but it isn’t. Hope won’t make the pain vanish. Hope won’t lessen the loss. But hope will keep you moving forward one step at a time on your journey because there are things that lie ahead of you, that you may not be able to comprehend at the moment, but which will heal you. And yes, hope is for everyone.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who understood how deep discouragement could be, and yet he never lost hope. He once said, “But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

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