Hoping For Hope

Hope.

It's a small word with an immensity to it that's impossible to capture in words. As a cancer survivor, I know the importance of these for letters.

Whether it's your body being wracked in pain because of poisons coursing through your veins in an effort to kill the rogue cells that are killing you; or the places on your body that have been bombarded with radiation to keep cancer from spreading; or the raw skin, still welted from incisions, that have taken away part of your body to keep it from becoming worse and devouring you; or the still, quiet presence of knowing you might not make it and wondering what life will be like on the other side... and what will become of your friends and family... and how the end will present itself and... a hundred other why's and how's and when's and frustrations - Hope is what you cling to.

No one is unscathed in this world. Regardless of whether you become sick through no fault of your own or the decisions you made have brought about illness or pain (mental, physical, emotional), sometimes (maybe all the time) you hurt and you need something to hold on to. So please... hope!

Accept hope. Hope for the best. Hope you will overcome. Put a strangle hold on hope and grip it as if your life depended on it so that, if the worst happens and you pass away, you will meet the personification of hope that is... Him.

PS: I was looking through some old paintings and I found this, and I hope it inspires someone to keep up the fight, to hope even when hope seems futile because Hope is always with you.

For my entire life (since birth), my body has been riddled with defects. For cancer, it's been 16 years since I went into remission. And for me, not an hour goes by that I don't recognize what disease has taken from me or what Hope has given to me.