Please don’t say despair is a sin. It’s a feeling. It’s what we do with the feeling that counts.
You are right to trust in God. The advice I would give to the Lady who cried last night is to pray for the best and prepare her life for the worst.
No, despair IS a sin. De -spero, lack of hope.
Hope is not a feeling. It is one of the three theological virtues implanted in us by the Holy Spirit.
You can hope even when you are feeling lousy. You can hope when you are as pessimistic as heck. Optimism is not the same as hope. Pessimism is not the same as de-spair. Pessimism and optimism are rational judgments based on evidence. In addition to rational judgments we have feelings, good and bad, related to pessimism optimism.
But hope is not feeling nor pure rational judgment. It’s based on faith. And hope can flourish even where both feelings and reason signal the worst possible negatives.
In this case, as others have pointed out, we have little reason to think pessimistically.—they are trying to discourage us with no real evidence on their side.
It’s easier to have hope when there’s reason for optimism. But even if all the evidence pointed to the worst imaginable outcome, we can still hope—in faith.