Your Dying Spouse 438 - No Hope But This {FMF}

There's no hope now, but there is this (and I'm too trashed to do more than lift a comment I left on another blog, sorry). It's the best I have, and all I have.

"I’m finding that for me, success equates to discipline, because that’s what keeps hope alive in one’s darker hours. Getting pneumonia over the Christmas holidays, on top of everything else, I’m in no little danger, and things are so unpleasant (putting it mildly) that it’s easy to feel abandoned by God, and to metaphorically fold my arms and just stop…stop writing, stop caring, stop nurturing the hope that there may yet be hope.

"That way leads down a path from which, eventually, there’s no return, because it leads to a magnetically false God, one whose promises are cherry-picked and whose fell warnings are cast aside, and in whose inevitable failure is the seed of faith’s destruction, hope’s abnegation, and the withering of love.

"So success is holding tight to where I am, writing when I don’t want to write (like right now), forcing myself to keep caring because I cared once, and choosing faith, not because it ‘works’ but because it’s only truly defined by the chiaroscuro of pain’s deep shadow." (This originally appeared as a comment on the Steve Laube Agency blog, For The New Year: Define Success)

I'm sorry that I have been unresponsive to comments, both on the blog and on Facebook. I'll try to do better, but just writing a few sentences is exhausting now.

The Impossible Dream and the final scene from Man Of La Mancha are the accompaniment. Hope you don't think it kind of self-serving; I just like the song.

If you're interested, you can find Andrew's books on Amazon.