Moving through the dark

We’re in the darkest time of the year. The time when we wake up hours before the sun and scurry home from work (if you’re working somewhere not from home during this most unusual COVID time) to a rapidly setting sun. As I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of the dark. I don’t find comfort from the inky blackness that envelopes all I can see. I don’t like feeling my way towards the kitchen light to create an electric sense of safety and security in the morning. I’d much rather wake up to the first long tendrils of the sun making their way over the rooflines and trees in my neighborhood. And I love nothing more than going to bed when the sun’s rays cast shadows from the objects around me.

But the long, languid days of summer aren’t where we are in the calendar. Instead, we’re one day away from the shortest, darkest day of the year. And I’m up early, in the cold, pale light of the moon, wondering what I can take from this time. How can I reframe this season to be a lesson versus an obstacle, not just for myself but for anyone reading this?

In many ways, I’m fumbling around in the dark, relying on my instincts of where things might be situated as I move through this new mental space. It’s challenging because it’s like I’m in a room I’ve never been in before, navigating around massive, sharp-edged furniture I’ve never seen in the light. And the darkness seems to be lasting forever.

But as the first faint rays of pale pink sunlight make their way over the roofs across the street this morning, I am reminded again that even the darkest, longest nights give way to the light of morning. I trust that all this fumbling around will eventually give me a mental map of this new path I am developing, one that I can instinctively traverse with confidence.

So my question to you is this: what area of your life are you moving through in darkness? What path are you taking that feels uncertain, even scary?

And my challenge to you (and to me) is this: where can you plug in a figurative nightlight to help illuminate this unknown journey? Who or what can be the flashlight that lights up the scary corners and highlights the impediments right in front of you?

We all have to go through this darkness, because it’s where we are in the calendar, and it might be where we are in our lives right now, too. But we don’t have to go through it alone. There’s no shame in turning on a light to chase the fears, real and imagined, away.

Regardless the uncertainty that lives with us, we all just have to keep on taking the next step and the next. If you see a long night ahead of you, remember that even the darkest of nights does move into morning, and you (and I) will, too.

Safe journey; I’m rooting for you.

*Picture of the sun setting Dec 19, 2020 at 4:33pm.