![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Many stories to tell, but no time to tell them in. We're cleaning the house, trying to get ready for Christmas, The Boy moving out in January and company coming in this weekend. Right now the house is in that awful middle stage where everything looks so completely worse than it did before we started that we're occasionally wondering why we even started in first place.
This weekend I took some time off from cleaning and rearranging and went to a dinner with the Men's Group. It was a nice evening, although I tended to hang out in the kitchen and stay away from the larger groups of people. By doing, so, however, I was able to sit down and eat with The Gardener and his wife and have them both to myself.
The Gardener is one of those people who I felt an instant connection to the first time I met him. No idea why or how, it just was there. Officially, he's the father-in-law to The Boy's Godfather, but I just consider him "family."
Being with him is always a wonderfully calming, learning experience. Saturday we were talking about an email I'd sent out shortly after starting The New Job, apologizing for dropping out of site to so many people and letting them all know that things finally appeared to be getting better. He was moved by what I'd written and the honesty that I'd put forth in that message.
"People don't understand when I tell them that I don't know which is stronger, love or hope," he said. "I really think it's hope. Without hope, you can't feel love."
I agreed. During the summer of '04 when I was unemployed and sinking deeper and deeper into depression I could have told you that I was loved. I knew that Bonn, the kids, my family and our friends loved me. It was an intellectual "knowing", however because I couldn't feel much of anything and certainly not any tangible connection to any other person that could come close to love.
All because I'd lost hope.
My Christmas wish for all of you, you fine people who helped to keep me afloat in ways you'll probably never know, is for you all to know and keep hope with you always.
...
