Learning to Navigate Hopefully

Coming home from our long weekend in the mountains, I find that I am filled with more questions than answers.  In so many ways, I am more grateful at this point in my life than at any other time in my forty-six years.  I have my loving husband and our four incredible Angel daughters.  We have our furry and feathery family members, the souls of our home, our constant companions.  We have our home as well as our other spaces in which to hide and retreat.  We can afford to have two daughters in college.  We are secure, happy and solid.  We are alive.

Yet this has been a year that has brought more despair than I have ever known during my forty-six years.  The death of my beloved brother in February created a domino-effect that we are all still trying to cope with almost ten months later.  I have experienced biting betrayal that left me in a state of pain, confusion and depression for much of the first half of this year.  We have been kept from my nieces, our other Angels, my brothers daughters, without any rhyme, sense or reason.  And now we must fight.  Fight for what we know is honorable and good and right.  Battle for love.  And although I know all too well that many others have walked this path before us, it rips at my heart to have to follow in their wearied footsteps.  When I look down at the path that lies ahead, I see things that have been shed both necessarily and by choice.  I see old growth which has been discarded and seedlings of things that may someday grow into something more.
Yes, indeed, the road is covered with more sharp edges and prickliness than I would ever care to navigate on my own.  Yet I know that I am not alone.  Never alone.  I am guided along by God, a Force much more powerful than I can even begin to understand.  I have my husband, my forever-partner and our daughters, our heaven-sent Angels.  And I have my brother, sometimes whispering, sometimes yelling, reminding me that we are the connection.  I am the connection.  He tells me that he will do whatever he can to help us to make things right.  He reminds me that he walks the path along side of me, his older sister and will remain here until the journey is just and complete.  For however long it takes, he will walk the tightrope between this world and the next.  He will stay between, balanced only by the hope and the knowledge that I will do what I must in order to bring his daughters back into the circle.
Along the path, there is renewal and there is hope.  There are words that come to me and I listen as carefully as I am able.  And when I look down and see the hope which grows along the path I feel gladdened and peaceful and safe.  Because if something that begins as tiny and as vulnerable as this...
can grow into an enormous giant that will, most likely, outlive me then I can hope.  And even in the midst of the darkness, there is always light.  Sometimes only as tiny as a glimmer and sometimes bright enough to guide us through places in which we are hesitant to go.  But how will we know if we aren't willing to muddle through the prickly, dark spots in order to find our way?  There is bittersweet beauty in all of it because it is a part of the process.  And if hope can create a towering canopy of Ponderosa trees out of a pencil-tip seedling, then it can certainly sustain us on the path that lies ahead.

May you honor that which you have lost by holding tightly onto the hope that you have gained along the road.  May you always feel guided, loved and surrounded by the things that allow you to believe in the journey.  If you aren't happy with the way that your story is going, may you search for a way to change the ending.

Thank you for hanging with me over a bit of a blogging break.  You are always appreciated.