Hello there,

I took quite a few days between writing to think over the best way to explain what darkness means to me. Perhaps I ought to have started here, but alas, this is where we are now. I’ve been working on a bit of the backstory, because I imagine that would be helpful for those of you who don’t know me. But it is hard to muddle through exactly how to condense my life story into discernible words. The delay in writing is becoming untolerable, so those details will have to wait for another day. I thought it would be simpler for now to explain what darkness has felt like for me over the years.

Before the darkness came, there were places in my life that held secrets and shadows. I was good at covering them up. Eventually learned to rip them up by the roots and let light shine in. “Nothing good ever grows in the dark,” I said. I challenged God, and he met all of my questions. Not always with answers, and certainly not always the answers I wanted, but always with love.

When the first of the darkness crept in, it felt foreign and unfamiliar. Nothing in life seemed to be turning out quite the way I expected. And when things got hard and I prayed, I didn’t feel Him anymore. When I leaned in, there was silence. It was terrifying. What I initially expected to be dipping my toes into the waves suddenly turned into being drug out by the undertow. Everything around me became dark. I remember being alone in the middle of the night and praying. I had hours to pray, and at the beginning I filled that space with questions and requests. But night after night, I heard nothing but silence in return.

I felt as if everything I held dear was slowly being stripped away from me. My health, my marriage, the chance at being the mom I thought I would be. And the weight of the darkness was suffocating.

After a while, the dark was no longer a stranger. It was my constant companion. It dimmed the sun and snuffed out hope. Its sinister whispers kept telling me that I could not survive this. If I did live to see the other side, I would be a twisted, broken, irrevocably shattered version of myself.

It felt as if I was trapped in a train tunnel. In the tunnel it’s incredibly dark and damp. Anytime I think I see light in the distance and struggle back onto my feet, the train barrels through to run me over again. Eventually I learn to just lay still in the dark. It seems less painful to let things slide by than to get continuously plowed down. It’s cold, and lonely, but its what is familiar now. At least here, the shadows are known to me.

The hardest part of it all for me was finding someone I could be truly vulnerable with in the midst. We humans are not very good at listening empathetically to someone without attempting to fix their problems. We’re not taught well how to just sit in the moment with someone, to simply reassure someone they’re not alone. And being fully vulnerable meant I had to be fully honest. And truth telling for me then was incredibly costly. There is a quote by Fredrick Buechner that sums up my experiences with this so perfectly. Perhaps you, too, can relate.

They tell what costs them the least to tell and what will gain them the most; and to tell the story of who we really are and of the battle between light and dark, between belief and unbelief, between sin and grace that is waged within us all costs plenty and may not gain us anything, we’re afraid, but an uneasy silence and a fishy stare.

Fredrick Buechner

I went to therapy. As newly single mom who had survived an emotionally abusive relationship, it seemed like the best and safest path to protect my daughter. At least the therapist won’t be afraid of my darkness, I thought. Besides, I’m paying her to listen well. I remember being afraid, thinking that this step meant I would have to start fighting again. I would have to stand up in the dark and risk the train to find the light. My therapist gently told me that the only way out was through, but that she knew I could do it. I had to feel the feelings: all the pain, the resentment, the anger, the fatigue, the fear. I would never make it out of that tunnel if I didn’t try.

So every day I woke up and struggled my way through. It was a long process. Years long. I began to tell myself things that were true, even if they felt like lies. I am enough. I can survive this. I will learn truth (about life and about myself) in this. It was possible that God still loved me. It won’t always be this hard.

On this side of things, the side where darkness has retreated to the shadows once more and I live in the light, darkness no longer seems as if it will reign forever. I still remember the feeling of being utterly alone. And there are days when the lies sneak back in. Where I feel as if all this good, this glorious life, can’t possibly be for me. Perhaps this is yet another precious thing I will lose and find myself back in that tunnel anew. But the truth is, that fight in the darkness taught me that I can survive. That God will come and rescue me. Most alarmingly, it’s even possible that God was rescuing me in the midst of the darkness when I sought him so fiercely, I just couldn’t see.

The darkness broke me. I suppose it breaks most everyone. But it didn’t destroy me. In the end, the slivers of me didn’t blow away like dust into the wind. They formed this softer, truer version of myself.

My deep hope is that you feel this too. That even though you might be surrounded by the dark, you are not alone. You could be fighting a war in that tunnel, but it will not destroy you. Take heart my friend. The dawn will come. It may take years. It may take decades. When it comes, it may look unlike any day you expected. But it will come. The dawn will win. Because casting aside darkness is what light does.

Until then, know that I am here.

All my love,

Becca