Hope Floats

Within the past two years I have made a very strange realization. I think it's been something I probably should have noticed earlier, but I didn't. Maybe it's because I couldn't stand back and look at the events or my feelings. Or maybe I never experienced such emotional highs and lows so close together before. I don't know.

So here it is: good and bad things often happen at the same time. Or at least they overlap. And because good and bad things happen close together, I believe that joy is never too far from mourning.

For the past 15 years, I have not been good about expecting good things in my life. In fact, since my open-heart surgery in 2000, I have had this sorta negative positive view. By that I mean, I hoped for good things but always expected bad things to happen. I was grateful to be alive every day, but when I went to bed at night I was never really sure I would wake up. I hope I have a job tomorrow, but if I don't, this is how life is.

I never really expected things to last very long. Relationships, spiritual highs, great times, etc. I just thought at some point the wave I was riding on would crash. And I had better damn well appreciate it while I was on it.

There's a problem with that thinking. When you are focused on the end, you can't appreciate the present.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciated life. I loved my life. I remember attending my sister's wedding shortly after my surgery and being authentically happy. I didn't have this "woe is me for being the older brother and still not married." I mean, I was really celebrating her happiness like it was my happiness as well. I was filled with such amazing joy. I danced my butt off at the reception. I had a great time. The times I spent with family and friends were wonderful.

Yet at the end of the day there was still this awareness of my own end. That it would come some day. And more than likely, it would come soon. I've always been able to find support for this perspective in the Bible, too. Scripture talks about our lives being like a vapor. Ecclesiastes goes on and on talking about how our lives are so short and that worldly things are meaningless. In some ways I really thought I had a healthy perspective on my life. On my mortality.

And then just over a year ago my best friend, Joe,  died. Right in the middle of all these great new life changes. Barely a month after I married the love of my life. And over two months after I had moved to the Chicago area, got a great new job in the city and began a new era in my life. How could he?

And I didn't know how to feel about my life or...well...just how to feel. I was confused. To be fair, I had been going through a whole freight train of emotions since I transplanted myself near Chicago. As I've said before, I was a small town guy and then in a matter of two weeks I went from commuting through cornfields to taking a train to downtown Chicago to work at a company on the 21st floor of a high rise. I left an amazing church and close friends behind in Springfield, Illinois to live close to my fiancee. And then we get married a month later and there all those new life adjustments.

Then Joe dies. It was pretty much the final life-changing event for me in awhile. There were other things that happened, but this loss truly shook me up.

All of these life-altering events happened within 3-4 months. I was not sure how to deal with the changes. I mean, there is one side of me that said I needed to be thankful for my new wife, my new job, a new era of life with surprises. Then there is this other side that says all these changes have got to be rough on you, Jason. And on top of that you lose your best friend. It's understandable if your sad or angry or stressed out.

When I was in high school and college, I think I believed big life events happened like TV seasons. One major event per TV season. It seemed like happy and sad events in life didn't occur right next to each other. Maybe I don't remember things correctly (and this would not be the first time), but it seemed there were long periods of time in between each event.

Does this mean that later in my life I will look back on my wedding, my move and the death of Joe as completely separate events that seemed far apart? I don't know. One thing I'm pretty certain of is that regardless of how we remember things, it is a sweet grace that the good events seem to overlap with the bad in real time. It may be confusing at the time. It may even be overwhelming. But I think that hope is like a flotation device in the middle of shipwreck. I don't think we could handle the tragedy without a dash of hope. At least I don't know if I could.

I'm starting to believe that things can get better. In fact, I believe hope isn't just in the future, it's in the present. Even if things get worse, and they always do, they still get better. Joy and sadness overlap. And joy comes with the morning.

Girl, 16, fatally shot: 'She was my little baby'

Fighting back tears, he said he had taken Taylor shopping just days ago. “She was my little baby,” he said. “She was doing so good."Speaking by phone from Highland, Ind., the grandfather said he was having trouble finding words to describe his feelings."She’ll be very, very missed by everyone in the family,” he said.

Girl, 16, fatally shot: 'She was my little baby'

Please keep praying.