I could never have imagined the darkness that lay ahead on what was just an ordinary day several years ago. Following our daily habit of rising early, my husband began to rouse our crew for our morning time together. Life went from rising expectations to an abrupt fall into darkness in a few short minutes. Gary called out, “Mary, she’s gone!” One of our children had left the house in the dark hours. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t know when or if I’d ever see her again. I was absolutely in the dark.
Being in the dark is seen as a disadvantage. “In the dark” may convey ignorance, or it may convey exclusion from an inner circle. Being in the dark brings to mind the horror of nighttime: hearing things but not seeing them. What I hear but cannot see conjures up magnified images in my mind of certain disaster and doom. While my nighttime blindness is only temporary, it can instill anxiety-provoking uncertainty.
Being in the dark is summed up in the phrase “I don’t know.” That is so uncomfortable that I fight against it. Life, however, isn’t all light all the time. All light would induce its own blindness as well.
This past year, with a pandemic whose horizon keeps stretching, many of us have been pulled into the dark. We don’t know when COVID will end. We don’t know when our weddings and funerals can resume in any fashion we recognize. We universally struggle with having no end in sight while uniquely suffering through the pandemic consequences of isolated bubbles.
I hope to sit next to my 90-year-old mother again and hug her. Touch is the forbidden sense, yet it’s the one she understands the best.
Even without a pandemic, our lives hold plenty of uncertainty, plenty of being in the dark. Maybe, as it has been for me, it’s cancer, losing a child, or a child claiming unbelief. Not all not knowing is so heavy, though. Not knowing can be everyday ordinary, like when my 7-year-old son knew how to get a moving box into our van, and I didn’t. I accept that everyone in my life knows something a whole lot more than I do, even the youngest of people. This is a benefit of being in the dark; it keeps me open to a new way.
Recognizing I am in the dark can also be empowering. I heard author and missionary, Elisabeth Elliot say:
“When I was young, I knew all the answers, but no one asked me the questions.
Now I am old, and everyone asks me questions, but I don’t know any of the answers.”
This place—of not rushing to know by giving or having an answer—gives space for resting and pausing in the dark. Being in the dark provides us with the freedom to be curious and to keep searching, not for a light but for The Light. This quote helped me during my dark cancer days.
“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied: “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.”
Minnie Louise Haskins
I held on to this quote again when my darkest moment happened in the dark cover of the night when my child ran away. Though she was safely re-established in our home, I remained in the dark for months and even years, walking with this child to love her and to restore the relationship. Part of that was walking through her own darkness with her, holding on to each other and to the hand of God.