Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Awareness of how such illusions grip us often comes through a crisis or hardship. In the face of a great pain or inescapable grief, we realize how little we control our lives, how feebly our protests change reality. Something happens to make us realize we can let go of a cherished ambition, bid farewell to a friend, or accept an ailing body. We relinquish the hope of a marriage or career recognition that seems out of reach. We look in the mirror and admit that we are not strikingly handsome, not always the center of conversation at parties, not always brilliant. And we allow ourselves to remember that not only does life include losses, but in the end we will in some sense lose everything because we will, inevitably, die. At the same time, we sense that there may be more to life than life.