Hope is like a golden cord to Heaven. Many experts believe hope can and does heal us! When I suffered my stroke, I remember lying in my hospital bed unsure what had just happened to me. After a few weeks of not being able to move my paralyzed side, talk or hear out of my right ear , I realized I was facing the fight of my life. I was scared and had no idea what to expect until one evening when I was sitting awake in my hospital room a gentleman mopping the hallway said hello. Unable to speak I motioned for him to come in. I wrote a message saying that I had suffered a massive stroke to which he quickly replied “so did I when I was your age”. I’m sure the look on my face said it all. There he was standing, talking and walking just fine. At that very second I was enveloped with hope. He told me to keep up the hard work and never give up. He smiled and left. To this day, I credit him for instilling the first hope of recovery. Perhaps that is why visiting my fellow stroke survivors while they are in the hospital is so important to me.

Jerry Groopman, MD, author of The Anatomy of Hope, writes that hope is different than merely thinking positively because hope requires an understanding and acknowledgement of the obstacles. He says there is “no room for delusion” if we are to be truly hopeful. “For my patients,” Groopman writes, “hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform.

But what stimulates the hope that can sometimes lie dormant within us? Knowledge—knowing what has happened, what may happen and that we have the ability to influence outcomes. Because you see, the most powerful medicines known to man are not in the doctor’s office, the pharmacy or the science lab. They are in your brain. Chemicals in the brain can help facilitate healing. We have access to these healing chemicals 24/7 and that should give us hope. Our beliefs and expectations—the foundation in which hope is built—can trigger the release of these healing chemicals.    Psychology Today 2012

Hope does not deny the present darkness, but it reminds us that dawn is coming”…Martin Luther King Jr.

By Elke Zilla with Marilyn Geddes

We can never fully understand why things happen. Things happen for different reasons; reasons beyond our grasp; reasons perhaps unique to our soul’s code. For all of us, uncertainty is a reality of human life, but if we live in the apprehension of illness we surrender part of our lifetime to fear. The biggest challenge for all of us is to trust enough, to relax fully into life and embrace the healing power of hope.

Herein lies the peace of God.
All is well.