Firmly anchored

The health insurance precertification process for my upcoming surgery is making progress -- slow progress, but progress.

Outside my kitchen window, something else is making slow but inexorable progress...

I've been immeasurably lucky to find blogs, by intention and through chance, that are kept by people battling a range of serious, even life-threatening challenges.
Some of the challenges are physical -- against cancer and other illnesses.
Some are mental struggles -- against inner demons, against reality, against ordinary, everyday things that for one reason or another loom far larger than they should and will someday look small in retrospect, if the memories linger at all.
Some of the challenges encompass all of these threats.

In nearly all these blogs, the will to survive -- no, not just to survive but to prevail -- is an unstoppable force made manifest through the simple act of sharing those challenges. I draw lots of strength through this network, and I'm humbled and grateful when I'm told I contribute to it. It's the two-way-street aspect that I like most.

Outside my kitchen window grows what I believe is a weed. It's a vine-like plant that seems intent, almost as if it had a will, to creep as close as possible to my window screen. Once within reach, it dispatches emerald tendrils that seek out the screen and then extend through it, like tiny green fingers reaching through the bars of a prison cell. The tendrils then curl back on themselves and form a tenacious grip.

I snip those tips that grip the screen.
Within a day or two they're back or are replaced by others.
They keep on growing, keep on reaching.

This is the power of hope.
And this is why I'm lucky to have good blog friends.