After Everything, Can You Still Believe That the Best Is Yet to Come?
Our capacity to hope for the light should be strongest during the darkest night
“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” — Robert H. Schuller
Sometimes, after a tragic incident or a painful loss, you may come to that point when you could no longer believe that things could get any better.
How could they? How could any day be better when you could no longer go back to the day when your heart was whole and your soul was full of hope?
How do you ever laugh again when your eyes are so full of tears you couldn’t even smile? How do you live again when every day you feel like you’re dying over and over again?
Where do you find hope? What could peace ever mean to you again? Could the world turn back before you were even scarred? Could time be a friend until you could find all the shattered pieces of your heart?
When you’re hurt to the very core of your being, it’s hard to imagine you could ever find your way out of that pain again. It’s hard to even breathe. Yet for all it’s worth, you take one breath at a time. You live through the pain. And you find yourself surviving yet another day.
Many times, it’s as though you’re a mere observer to your own life. You see this person who doesn’t know where to go next. You want to reach out to her but you can’t. You want to tell her something but you can’t find the right words.
Somehow, however, you witness her enduring the toughest times. You see her grow. And you see that kind of strength you’ve never seen before.
Is this the result of being able to make it through troublesome times? Where did she find the tenacity to hold on for each painful day she’s had?
But somehow, she did. And so will you. You may not know how. And you may not believe now how there could ever be a way. But the way to a better future is already being built in front of you.
Healing can still take place. Dreams can still be born. But you have to hold on for one more day.
Hold on today and the day after this one, and then the day after that.
You don’t have to see now how a better tomorrow would look like. You just have to hope that somewhere amidst all this darkness, there is still something good, something that will carry you through towards a better day.
All is not yet lost. The best is yet to come. For as long as you can find your next breath, you can find that light to bring you hope.
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”― Anne Lamott