When Darkness Fell
By Susan Vaughan Shumake
*****
Jeremiah 31:9
“They will come with weeping;
they will pray as I bring them back.
I will lead them beside streams of water
on a level path where they will not stumble,
because I am Israel’s father,
and Ephraim is my firstborn son.”
*****
When Darkness Fell
I had fought for my life, and now there was death all around me. Where was the light and the life I had been fighting for? In every struggle there seemed to be defeat. My battle had been endless and there seemed to be no victory.
When darkness fell, I fell too. I fell into the darkness. I fell into discouragement. I fell into that desperate place of personal pain that calls you to your knees. There was nowhere else I could go. Desperate, the darkness overcame me.
In the darkness there is no light. In the darkness there is no praise. In the darkness we can only see our pain and our grief and nothing beyond it. It is heavy and black and swallows our hope. When we are brought down by crises again and again, hit before we can even stand, there is nothing left to do but wait on our knees in the darkness and look up. We look for the light.
It is in this place of lament that we are found by God. He, in the midst of our pain and blindness, carries us through days of fog. He wraps our wounds with His love even when we do not see, and protects us from our own sorrow that would alone destroy us. He covers our hearts and holds us, bound by His Spirit and will not let go. He whispers to us, even in our solemn silent anger and listens to our fight against injustice. He leads us through the depths of our darkness until our eyes adjust and we see Him, a glimmer of hope.
When we feel safe and alone with God we can find a place of release, and then the torrents flow. We weep rivers of tears, over and over again, until there are no more. After the raging emotions within us have been spilled, finally there is room for His peace. As we allow God’s presence in the midst of our pain, we begin to see the light that was there all along. The light that is God. Jesus is the light of life.
The fight against cancer is a fight for life. The fight against Covid-19 is a fight for life. It takes all of our bodily strength. It takes all of our emotional energy. The fight takes the physical life right out of us. In order to gain our lives we must lose them. No one understands our personal pain. No one understands the injustice you have had to face, the darkness you have been living in. When you are in the dark, in a place of endless defeat, look for the glimmer of light. It is there. He is there, and He is already holding your broken heart.
*****
