Hope

     I never really thought about it before but one of my friends, who is also the parent of one of my students, said, "You really love words."  For my 50th birthday, she and her daughter made me a wonderful sign that consisted of 50 words about me.  I never really thought about it before, but I really do love words.  I always notice wall hangings that are made up of words.  I love all of the quotes carved in the marble of so many memorials and buildings in Washington, DC.  I love the way they look and I love the impact they can make.  Words.

     One of my favorite words, and the one I have been thinking about the most in the last couple of months, is HOPE.  It is an incredibly powerful word.  One of the best quotes I have read about hope is,

                                       "Hope is grief's best music"  ~Author Unknown

     It would be easy to criticize the word, hope.  It is not tangible, measurable, or provable but I can't deny it is "grief's best music."  Whether you are suffering or watching someone suffer, or your life just simply turned out differently than you wanted it to, hope does add music to the grief.

     My brother once told me,  "Sometimes you just need to take a minute to pause."  I have found a great deal of comfort in those words.  When life gets overwhelming or hard to figure out, a moment to pause often helps.  You will find that you have a number of options to choose from in that moment but,

                       "Once you choose hope, anything's possible."  ~Christopher Reeve