Hope

My friend, Betts, told me a story about a fishing trip she took once with her late husband,Jim.  He was fishing along the shore with no luck and had run out of worms.  Just as he was giving up, he noticed a frog by the bank with a worm in its mouth. So he grabbed the frog and tried to no avail to remove the worm from the frog's mouth. That didn't deter him, though.  He got out the bottle of whiskey he had along and poured it over the frog's mouth.  Well, the frog's eyes rolled back and it dropped the worm.  So Jim was able to go back to his fishing for a while.  It wasn't long, however, when he noticed the frog was back.  This time he had two worms in his mouth.

Hope is the fuel that keeps us going each day.  If we had a bad day, we hope when we wake up in the morning that it wil be a better day.  The alcoholic who has been sober for a day, hopes he/she can wake up and stay sober for one more day.  You hope that there is another cup of coffee in the pot for you when you need a picker upper.

The man walking the four dogs from the dog shelter, who I saw on the trail this morning, is hoping that someone will come and give one of the dogs a new home today.  There was one less dog today, so hopefully one found a home yesterday.

I used to take my son out fishing on the Missouri River with me.  We would sit along the bank all day long with nothing to show for our efforts but the pleasure of watching the deer on the opposite bank.  Each time we cast, we had high hopes that this time would be the one that would catch the big trout. We never went home with the trout, but we had some good mother son times together.

Hope is the thread that keeps us going.