Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Dark. Heavy. Drowning. I don’t know if it’s the change in season or if it is all the chaos in my life at the moment, but darkness has become my constant companion of late. Some days I feel like I am watching actors on a stage; like I can’t actually engage with anyone. I am going through the motions of living without feeling alive. I am doing my best to push my people away, when in fact, I should be pulling them close.

 

Hello darkness, my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

still remains

Within the sound of silence

Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence, 1964

 

The darkness is like a heavy blanket. It brings comfort in its familiarity, but it weighs on me and pulls me deeper into the night. I think its kind of funny, I am scared of the dark, but I have spent so much of my life living in a place of darkness. Ironic.  I am not meant to live in the dark. I am called to be a light in the darkness of the world, but how do I outrun the black when I feel so trapped in the darkness in my mind? It takes work.  It takes reaching out to those around me. It takes speaking the name of Jesus to the dark and twisty places.

 

Jesus, Jesus, You make the darkness tremble Jesus, Jesus

Your name is a light that the shadows can’t deny

Your name cannot be overcome

Andres Figuero, Charles Bently, Mariah McManus, Mia Fieilds, Tremble

 

I have hope. I know that this darkness will not last forever. I know that if I choose, I don’t have to sit alone in the dark. Depression would have me believe that I am alone. Depression would tell me that there is no hope and that there will be no end to the night. I admit that I believe those lies that are whispered to me in the silence of the night. I believe the lie that there is no point in fighting. I believe the lie that tells me I should keep silent about my fears. But, the night won’t last forever.

 

…We may weep through the night, but at daybreak it will turn into

shouts of ecstatic joy.

Psalm 30:5, The Passion Translation

 

What is the darkness in your life that is holding you captive? What familiar vice have you fallen back on when life becomes too much? Isolation. Anger. Fear. I am in the middle of the night right now. It is dark all around me and the weight is too much. It is too much for me to bear, but when I allow my people in, the weight becomes less as I allow them to help me carry it. So, while I walk in this time of seemingly everlasting night, I will hold on to the hope that the night will not last forever and my joy will come in the morning. And I will pull my people close.