I am depressed, hopeless, feeling suicidal, abandoned, friendless.

Lost. 

"Hope is an infallible thing. It is the one thing that you can never loose. You can't give up hope." The first time my friend David told me those words I wanted to cause him physical harm. I imagined myself hitting him very hard with a blunt object until he begged for mercy. (See, now you know why I was in therapy for so long... anger issues!) At the time, David led a small class on wedneday night called Freedom. Yes, we sat in a circle and shared our feelings. Anyway, the class that night was centered on depression. Oh, I had plenty to be depressed about. And many times have said, "I've lost all hope.", "I feel hopeless", "I want to die." So, since I am a verbal opinionated not so young lady I decided to voice my opinion. I retorted, "I don't believe thats true. I've lost hope before. I've even begged to die. I have even attempted suicide before."

He looked at me and said, "So when you tried to kill yourself what where you placing your hopes on?"

Without thinking I said, "Well, I was hoping to die. But, obviously that didn't work out."

"See, you didn't loose hope. It didn't magically go away. You just placed it in something else. Something that couldn't help you or give you joy."

At this point, I realized what he was saying was true. (Which inherently made me want to hurt him all the more!) I misplace my hope, faith and trust in things and people that can't help. So, when everything is lost, and theres nothing left where do you put hope in? Cars? Material possessions? Money? Family? All things will fail you. They will. Its a fact, not a theory.

Recently, I watched the new Rambo. Its like the millionth Rambo they have come out with. But this one was different. First off, it was more violent and bloody. Second, it was about the people in Burma, and medical missionaries that got capture there. This was an awefully graphic depiction of what these people went through. Some of them lived. But they all had one thing hope.

I personally place my hope in God. When life happens God is always there. Some have said to me, if your God is so great, why did he let you get in the car accident? I always answer the same way. Let me? It called free will. You can't have love without it. I love Val Kilmer, but I'm sure that if I kidnap him and lock him in the basement and say, "love me now!!!", not only would I be arrested, he definately would not love me. The greatest thing about Love is the freedom to choose. And that is where I place my Hope, in a God that is Love.

p.s. I also got my anger issues resolved in that same class. It took a couple of years.