Today I watched a 2017 film called Jungle, starring Daniel Radcliffe, based on the true story of Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg, who got lost in the Bolivian Amazon for three weeks. A frail “gringo,” as the natives called him, was not supposed to survive the wiles of nature. Navigating unknown territory. Killing snakes for food. Finding water through the trees. The odds were stacked against him. The trailer introduced a man driven by a passion for travel, which deeply resonated with me. But what sold me was the quick imagery of pain and suffering he would endure during the trek.
Pain has a way of pulling us in.
As I’m watching the movie, I’m having a simultaneous conversation with a friend who is asking me in-depth spiritual questions about the voice and the messaging God has given me to use. I was expressing how there has been a shift that has left me a bit quiet. As a writer, dancer, emcee, and activist, I have long identified as a voice for the voiceless. I tell stories of pain, my own and others’, that people may not have the language or courage to articulate, because I know what it feels like to have your voice taken, to feel unseen, unprotected, or unheard and have your pain quieted. But I told her that in this season, God seems to be shifting my message from identifying with pain to offering hope and healing as we go through pain.
And that shift hasn’t been easy.
As a storyteller, the most compelling stories often come from lived experience. God took me through a 13-year process of facing every layer of pain I had accumulated in my human experience, learning how to heal, sit with it, and transform it into something life-giving. Somewhere along that journey, I found myself standing in hope. Hope because I experienced firsthand that you are not what happened to you. Hope because stories can change. Hope because things do shift, though they require work, patience, discipline, and Faith. God steadied me in those things so deeply that even in dire times, I can’t deny hope when it rises.
As my conversation began to wrap up, so did the movie. There’s a moment where Yossi is on the brink of giving up, sinking in quicksand, exhausted, broken. And suddenly, he has a flashback of his Rabbi uncle praying over him, reminding him that he is protected and that God will guide him. Every time he reaches the edge of despair, that prayer returns and re-energizes him with hope.
Then, in one of the final scenes, alone, injured, surrounded by darkness, a butterfly lands on his finger. He whispers, “Hope.” Then, “Thank you.” And finally, he tells himself, “I will live.” What he doesn’t know is that while he’s fighting for his life, the friend he was separated from two weeks earlier never stopped believing he was alive. Against all odds, that friend keeps searching and eventually finds him lying by the river. Yossi is rescued. I didn’t realize how emotionally invested I was until the moment his friend screamed his name. I screamed in my living room, “Thank you, Jesus!” I needed him to be saved. I needed that hope, especially in the state of the world today. I couldn’t handle an ending that left him abandoned.
And that’s when it hit me.
In these times, hope feels risky. We are saturated with pain through social media, news cycles, and our own personal lives. Speaking hope can feel tone-deaf. For some, it feels dismissive. For others, it feels dangerous because hoping means risking disappointment again. I’ve felt all of those things. But just like this true story, it was hope that kept Yossi alive. It was hope that made his friend keep searching. And it was hope, rooted in Faith, that covered him in prayer before the journey even began.
Hope is not the absence of danger—it’s the decision to trust what’s holding you.
So in a world filled with pain, here is a voice of hope.
I am, you are, strong enough to get past the pain. The struggle. The fight. The circumstance.
But it will require patience, endurance, work, discipline, rest and Faith.
Peace and Blessings,
JL Domond