Sometimes life feels impossible.

Sometimes it feels like spring will never return, that light is hidden, engulfed. When I am wallowing in the depths, Marilla’s line from the 1980’s Anne of Green Gables comes back to me.  It struck me the very first time I heard Colleen Dewhurst’s elegant delivery.

“To despair is to turn your back on God.”

I don’t know if I believe in God, but I do believe in energy and change, and a wide universe of possibilities.

Representative John Lewis, the civil rights activist once said, “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime.” After being beaten and threatened by racist powers for much of his life, he had more reasons to despair than I ever could, and he didn’t, so I better not. However, there are days that the best I can muster is some sunny nihilism, but that’s ok. Every day we put one foot in front of the other is a day to work, to care, to create, a day to laugh, either at the world or ourselves. Everyday we fight for our existance is a day we know we are alive in every sense.

Fighting for life and the lives of those we love, even in the face of impossible odds is something Vincent and Catherine would understand.

So now, without further ado, Home: Chapter 33.