Hanging on by your fingernails

Sometimes, when we have nothing else to cling onto, we keep clinging anyways. A friend of mine used to say that sometimes we have to hang on by our fingernails if by nothing else. I think its really important to remind ourselves of that every once in a while. Because we all come through times and situations where hope seems elusive, almost baiting us on with a taste of it and then shimmering away till we wonder if we really had it in the first place. I wrote a poem a few years ago that I'd like to share here:

Fingers stretch
trying to grasp
the goodness in the world
to take hold
and never let go
a death grip's hold

Fingers of darkness reach, cling, twist
trying to choke
    destroy
          kill

Maybe hope is the leaf
that clings
     and will not
                          fall.

Sometimes its like we have two sources inside of us battling for the good, while the evil darkness tries to prevail and break the hope that we have within us. But yet, I think we can be stronger than this and really seek to find hope regardless of the situation. Sometimes in the bleakest, darkest moments, we have to keep hanging onto something--for me, it's God, for others it might be something else, but we can't let go. Because if we let go, it seems like the despair is just waiting to overtake us, pull us into a neverending darkness, just like how in Narnia there was everlasting winter until Aslan was on the move, shattering the darkness of winter with his presence, proclaiming spring instead.

In this time of gentle growing, sometimes, the fingers of darkness still clench at us, sometimes they still seem to want us, but we can't give up, we can choose to cling, we can choose to hang on, we can choose light.