Dwelling in dark places

I know darkness. I’ve spent most of my life hiding there, only peering out at random points before a hasty retreat back inside.

After nearly 20 years worth of medication for clinical depression and severe anxiety, multiple types of therapy and copious amounts of prayer ministry, I still know darkness and it knows me.

I’ve grown so accustomed to the dark that it hurts to be in the light. It’s painful to hope for more and find less. It’s painful to trust and not see the fruit of that risk pay off.

For a long time the darkness masqueraded as a friend, albeit an abusive and controlling one, offering to hide me away and ‘protect’ me. The longer we have walked the journey the more Stockholm syndrome-esque our relationship became.

It was easier to hide than to acknowledge the journey of darkness, mostly travelled alone.

People are willing to meet you in the place of twilight when you are entering a season and the potential for rescue seems great and entirely probable. Few are prepared to enter the dark with you. A place that is awkward, uncomfortable and gives little or no reward.

How often I have taken offense at what I have seen as unwillingness and self-preservation but as I’ve journeyed a very dark season that never seems to end, hopeless and grappling with despair and unrelenting natural circumstances, I realise that it could be more to do with inability as opposed to unwillingness.

Not everyone knows how to navigate the dark.

Now as I have started to climb out of the deep dark hole that has consumed me for far too long - I see the twilight and again people are more able to reappear here. They see me emerge and ‘behave’ how they expect and it’s at this point they give the long awaited response.

They haven’t been able to walk me through the dark and only find things to love and champion once I’ve taken those steps for myself.

Again the temptation of offense is strong, whispering the lie “Oh you’ll interact now that I’m being a ‘good girl’ and responding how you expect.”

In the all-consuming darkness it’s easy to forget that things we journey through are sometimes triggers and mirrors just too painful to walk alongside. Sometimes it’s too close to home and triggers things within us that we are not ready to process ourselves. We all have ‘stuff’ in our lives we are struggling with and often there is simply no room for more pain or ‘processing’ in our lives – I get that. Also, dare I suggest that for those who love me, struggle to be alongside me amidst my pain because they can’t bear to see me suffer and struggle and their compassion puts them in a place of pain because of that overwhelming sense of inadequacy.

I know in this dark season there have been many opportunities for offense, which in itself is the bringer of more pain, and at times I have fully partnered with that – too often in fact.

I have to choose with every part of my being to stop doing that and in a sense mind my own business. It is not MY business what you think of me; how you perceive me, react to me, interact with me. It IS my business to keep showing up and be authentically and consistently me. It’s your choice whether or not to partner and celebrate that. It shouldn’t be my distraction.

It’s my business to address the issues that stop me being the best version of me that I can be. It’s my responsibility to listen to who God says I am, who I am, and what He calls me, above all others.

It’s my business to dare to keep going on the journey to wholeness so one day (hopefully in the not too distant future) I can hold your hand in the dark, tell you how loved, valued, and how intentional your place on this earth is. Tell you that you have purpose and destiny beyond what you can imagine and that your struggle, although not orchestrated by God, will be used by Him to bring freedom to others. He planted a seed in you that if watered has the potential to become a mighty oak.

He doesn’t disqualify you regardless of your natural circumstances.

I’m but a mere sapling still bending and swaying every now and then to opinion and expectations of others but I’m growing my roots and planting them deep down so that the next time life brings me darkness, I’ll simply turn on the light. The light of knowing my full identity and inheritance as a daughter of the most high King. It’s a long but worthwhile process.

Don’t despise where you are right now but don’t stay there. No matter how small the step forward, it is still a step.

Celebrate the choice to keep moving. Find those willing to walk in the darkness with you and partner with your walk forward towards the light.