Got hope?

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”

Helen Keller

For awhile, we all played around with the "Got milk?" ad. I've seen stickers on car windows that say "Got turbo?" "Got boost?" "Got horsepower?"

But to me the most important question is "Got hope?" When we lose hope, we just don't "got" anything else.

Imagine Helen Keller's world. She couldn't see or hear. Her disabilities weren't partial. She was totally deaf and blind. There were dramatic descriptions in the famous movies and plays based on her life of her being trapped in a world of silent darkness , acting like a wild animal and being a creature of pity.

Yet, with the help of a loving and optimistic teacher named Annie Sullivan, who herself was visually impaired, Helen went on to finish college and became an internationally known speaker, writer and advocate for the disabled. In the times she lived, she was reduced to doing vaudeville acts because people were curious about her disabilities. However, she also was friends with Mark Twain and wrote many astounding pieces that foresaw the future of disability rights.

None of this would have been possible without a huge amount of optimism, confidence, sacrifice and hard work. But the first ingredient in the mix is hope.

Maybe you're reading this because you are a person with a disability or you're caring for one who is. Maybe you know someone who has given up hope or maybe you feel as if there's no hope.

It's an illusion if you think there's no hope. People can make extraordinary things happen for each other when we reach out to each other. God is always there, available 24/7 if you reach out to Him. Sometimes, as hard as it is, you have to find the optimism and the hope and have faith that things will get better before you see any results. No matter how bad things may look, that is the road to things getting better.

So the next time you feel the odds are against you ,think about what hope did for Helen Keller.