WEIRD HOPE

I have cracked the skin at the corner of my thumbnail. If I push my thumb really hard against the cradle of my forefinger, the thick, shiny blood bubbles out.

The bulb of deep red liquid catches the light and glistens like a tiny ruby. Soon the oxygen in the air will harden it and it will begin to congeal into a scabby black crust. While the wound repairs itself underneath, the blood will coagulate and protect me from the atmosphere, still doing its best to keep me alive. Blood provides life, sustains it and it protects it.

I have a weird hope that this is how it happens: my imperfections, my failings, the cracks in my skin are covered by blood - a blood so precious and rare that it is the fulmination of the greatest of lives and the greatest of deaths.

I wax lyrical.

It's OK to have a weird hope though. I was just on the phone to my friend and pastor, who's praying for my family at the moment. I heard my own cheery voice clash with his thoughtful sobriety and I wondered whether the conversation was happening the right way round.

"Yeah, it's not the best," I sighed, "But somehow I think things can work out still. I still have hope."

I imagined him nodding while imagining me smiling. It felt a bit odd.

"Matt we're praying for you." I got the impression from his tone that there was probably more than just my situation weighing upon him. It wasn't really the time to ask, but I was grateful anyway. We have a family intervention on Thursday and I'm not looking forward to it. Unlike last time, I'm not at the centre of this one, but that doesn't really make it any easier.

"Thank you," I said. "I do still have hope."

Someone once said that a pessimist is someone who sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. I don't normally go in for pithy quotes like that, but this I really like.

The blood is thick and hard now. It's deep red, almost black and shiny like the shell of a beetle. If I pull the skin of my thumb tight, it cracks open.

Do you think maybe that's how pain works? Slowly, the wound begins to heal under the blood? I rather like that idea. My heart is rather broken at the moment. Stones in ponds. Maybe it will take a while, but perhaps that process has already started? This is no doubt, a difficulty, but perhaps it's one that has its own opportunity?

Perhaps it's the opportunity to watch what happens as a wound heals over. Perhaps it's the opportunity to discover why I feel hopeful, though still lost in the middle of a lonely ocean? Perhaps it's a moment to think about hope as something greater than the word conveys - a fruit of some greater power that gives you the thing you need at the time when you feel like it's the furthest away.

I'm waxing again.

It's weird, this hope - it doesn't make any sense. I'm glad of it though.