Desperate times. Desperate measures.

Desperation.  Despair.  Loss of hope. 

Lord, it is all around us. 

Guide my words as I try to encourage a woman I barely know to breathe... that life is WORTH waiting for the current hurricane to pass.  Someday she may even want to run in the slanting sheets of rain again. 

Will I believe it myself when I tell her that tomorrow might just be better?  Will she believe that I care and love her if only because I feel her agony?  I do. 

What words would help me want to live?  What would I want to hear?  That my life matters?  That despite all the bitter words between us he would still love me?  That one day forgiveness would come over me and the squeezing pain would be like labor, long forgotten?        

I don't know.  In a day like that I don't think anything is clear but aching.  Lashing out, crying, wearing out friends, making good -- and then altogether bad -- decisions, simultaneously.  Loving someone but detesting their poor decisions, having to say goodbye to a lifetime. 

Getting over heart ache after heart ache is getting harder.  

Hope is becoming harder to find.

Have you noticed it, the vibration of loss?  The engulfing anger?  The injuring tongues? The mass of casualties of our actively hating each other?  Why does God permit it?  Our free will allows it.  It's a choice.

I need to tell you that there are patches of light if you look for them... if you believe they are there, even in your blindness.  HE will always love you.

So what will keep the hopeless safe?   God only knows.

How about not hurting each other in the first place.