Something I found in the Darkness.

“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light...”

(Barbara Brown Taylor, excerpt from “Learning to Walk in the Dark”)

New life, begins in the darkness. I believe BBT also said this. After all, God thought up the universe in the midst of darkness. So much truth in those words. She talks about how instead of thinking of the light in our lives like the sun, we picture the moon instead. There is never complete darkness with the moon, the light it gives off simply waxes and wanes, allowing for some illumination, even in the night. While I am still working through this metaphor and have not perfected how to talk about and make sense of it all, I am wondering if perhaps God redeems darkness and seasons of darkness into something we wouldn’t have even found to be true in the light.

I don’t think I ever would have come to that realization had I not had the year, the season of light waxing and waning, that I did. It only feels fitting to spend time in this space, “ruminating,” as my high school AP Biology teacher would tell us so often to do. I do so here and now, because I am finding myself at the “end of an era” so to speak in which change is coming but I don’t want to lose sight of anything that has happened to and with and for my nephesh this year.

It has been exactly a year since I last was with my dad in the flesh-- in person.

I saw him walking and breathing, playing pool, listening to hip-hop, sneezing and going about taking his Gout medicine, holding my nephew, saying “HAZY” and “Love you fathead.” It was the most whole I had felt in a while, being together with our weird, crazy Chambers/Childs/Wiggers clan. It has almost been a year since many of our lives were turned upside down. If I am sticking with the Barbara Brown Taylor language, it has almost been a year since the light in my life began die-- to wax and wane that it felt nearly invisible.

But what I have since discovered is that this dark season has  illuminated my life in a way I never thought possible.

Carrying the hole of my dad’s death around in my heart meant that I was  both prone to and more aware of grief in other places of my life. My dad’s death, in a sense, gave me a word and language to use for other losses I had experienced, disappointment, and unmet expectations and dreams. It opened up a season in which, I felt myself in fact, dying.

Not physically, obviously. But a certain dying to myself--or who I thought I was and everything I thought I needed to live the life I dreamt for myself. Of course, we dream, we plan, we think the goodness we intend for ourselves is much better than the heaven-sent goodness and mercy that pursues us all of the days of our lives. And we are radically shaken when something happens that is not in line with our own intentions. This year was not quite in line with my own intentions. But the dying, the stripping of multiple areas of my own ego and self dependence, the loss of my dad, the fragility of my own human existence led me to enter into a journey with the Lord that has created depth, a craving for God’s word, and space in my heart for others who hurt, who grieve, and who wonder where the good news is in their own lives.

The dying of myself continued on as I sought out jobs upon jobs (sustainable jobs in addition to my position as an RD) and received only “no”.  Each day, I found myself sitting at a desk, answering phones, ordering office supplies, watching others do the ministry I wanted to participate in myself. I felt angry that I prayed and prayed to be seen by someone who could actually do something, and God didn’t seem to want to have any of it. I was screaming, begging God to save me from my boredom, my seemingly meaninglessness. I started to doubt my own worth, my own vocation, the affirmations I received from others, my own hopes I had for my life.

But just maybe, the Spirit transformed my begging God to save me from boredom, into saving me from my own self.

God truly gifted me with the inner work of dealing with my own ego, and desire to make something of and for myself. The Spirit elicited in me a craving for truth in this season, when it felt like everything I had known was fleeting. I was given the gift of boredom, that led me to read my Bible (a crazy thought, right?) each morning at my desk before I began my tasks. I read through Proverbs, Romans, John, and Matthew. I prayed for God’s Word to latch on to what I felt was left of my heart. I prayed that it would transform me. I prayed that the Word would comfort me. I prayed that Jesus would be newly revealed to me. I prayed that I would bear fruit, like the tree in Psalm 1 and that any ego-centric way in me would be blown away.

Like I said earlier, miraculously in this season, my own grief created some capacity for me to hold space with others who were hurting. Primarily in my job as an RD, I found myself sitting with my residents and journeying with them through their own pain.

I was both broken with and for all of the hurt that is in the world. I sat with students who experienced abuse, whose parents were going through divorce, whose friend committed suicide, who attempted suicide, who were walking through mental illness, who experienced explicit racism, who were homesick, who felt rejected, whose grandparent died, who were overwhelmed, whose friends were not who they thought they were.

The list goes on.

I was made aware of not only my own brokenness and fading light in my own life, but that there is, in fact, a lot of pain in the world (thank you Kyle Small). However, my grief, the darkness and dying I was already in, led me to befriend the darkness in other peoples’ lives because it meant that we both could find healing there, together. Whether that healing was in naming the pain and sitting in it, or sharing it with someone for the first time, I found something profound was happening.

Don’t get me wrong, my time in Res Life was not all pain and gloom and sharing the darkness. To be honest, my time as an RD gave me so much life and began to reform the parts of me that were dying. New life, begins in the darkness. Perhaps it was the strong, fierce, resilient women I got to work with. They pushed me, challenged me, inspired me and grew me to be someone that can love this world better and love what I am becoming. I found strength in the ways they showed up for each other and even to themselves. I saw goodness and hope and change in the ways they fought for justice, for reconciliation, for human rights. I found strength and life and laughter in my colleagues and supervisors who spoke truth into my life, who lived out their callings vibrantly, who took time to laugh and to cultivate joy. I found strength and life in education, in striving to become aware, to do better, to be better. I found Hope (pun intended) to be the intersection between dark and light, dying and rising.

What I have learned in this dim season, is also that whether in moments, hours, or days, it has been the gift of my community that has saved me. For that, I am forever, grateful.

I am beginning to learn how to walk in the dark and how to go on living even though I am losing parts of myself. I am beginning to learn what it means for God’s goodness and mercy to pursue me all the days of my life, even in the darkest valley. I’m learning.

I am also learning what it looks like to receive joy again. Brené Brown said that joy is often one of the most vulnerable emotions because at any moment, the joy could be snatched from us again. I am trying to allow myself to feel joy at the answering of a prayer. To trust and to know the faithfulness and hesed (steadfast and enduring love) of God is true and present even when I cannot see.

Of course, I would trade all of this growth simply to have my dad walk this earth again. There is still a gaping hole, a vast void, in every area he used to exist on this earth and in the lives of myself and those who loved him. If I could’ve learned these things with him still alive, I would have chosen that alternative.

There is an article written by Courtney E. Martin called "The Gifts We Give, the Gifts We Receive" on Onbeing that beautifully highlights what we are left with when we face loss. We are given gifts from those that have passed whether it be from their existence or from who we become when they leave us. Martin quotes her friend Katie when talking about the gift of being changed by the love of her life, who died suddenly.

Katie says, "It’s a cruel gift, perhaps, an impossible gift to receive, to honor and to keep." 

That spoke wonders to my soul. It is a cruel and impossible gift to get to speak about my dad instead of to him and to speak of the losses that spiraled transformation in my life, after his death. Even in the darkness, we change because the darkness itself is an impossible gift.

All I know is that new life, begins in the darkness. I pray that you and I and everyone else would learn what it looks like to befriend the dark, to find and see what is in fact being illuminated about ourselves, about God, about this world within that darkness. I pray that the Spirit would remind to us this truth every single day. May we find truth, illumination, something that is waiting for us in the dying, in the darkness.