Hope, the Ship We Sail Upon

Hope. That’s really what this blog is meant to be about. I think sometimes I forget that as I struggle day-to-day with the newness of recurrence and how I am trying to fit it into my life.
Hope is the raft that promises that there’s a shoreline awaiting me after cancer has torn my boat to splinters. It fuels the belief that I will live into my 90s despite the threat of this disease. And that I will be active and healthy until my last day.
Hope drives my optimism that something like a cure lies around the next bend. It may not relieve me of this condition, but it will allow me to live with it.
Hope is what allows me to smile, even when I smell like a refinery from the chemicals injected into my body to defeat those pernicious cells and everything tastes like metal.
Hope allows me to make plans – like running for town council or writing a novel or finishing renovations on our historic home.
Hope reminds me to enjoy the sunshine and focus on the things going right in my life – like making a living as a writer in a small, river town with neighbors who are supportive and friendly, the golden threads woven intricately into the fabric of my life.
Hope has drinks with me at outdoor patios with my family and friends as the sun sets on the river on a Friday night, when I speak giddily about the people I’ve talked to that week, whose story I’m grateful to have been able to tell.
Hope is that quiet voice on the bad days that says “you’ll get through this. You will prevail, no matter what.”
Hope is the belly laugh I have with good friends about days gone by, that at the time seemed dangerous and dark and now, looking back, seem hysterical.
Hope are the neighborhood children who knock on my door wanting to go for a walk with me and my dogs, to make a fire and go for ice cream, reminding me that life is too short not to stop, take time out and enjoy it.
In then end, these forces remain: faith, hope and love. The greatest may be love, but hope is the ship that we sail upon and faith is the wind that fills her sails.