In the Darkness of the Valley of the Shadow of Death…there is Light

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:1-5

My husband’s alarm goes off and I pretend I didn’t hear it – convincing my body to ignore it and go back to sleep. The bed is warm and I know if I move the day will begin and I’m not ready to face it. And yet I know if I don’t get up I will be angry with myself for being ever behind on the never-ending list of things that must get done.

My body doesn’t move. It’s like my brain doesn’t know how to function and moving is one more decision too much for my brain to handle. Trapped by the bed and my own self, I lay there frozen in position. The longer I stay, the more stressed I feel, but the inertia needed to move the heavy mass on my shoulders and heart is too much.

Finally, once the level of stress is comparable to the mass of the responsibility, I slowly get out of bed, a soreness creeping across my body, emerging from deep in my bones. Walking out to make coffee, I must intentionally block out the mess around me in order to prevent being overwhelmed.

“Ignore, ignore, ignore. But don’t ignore the children who need you to help them with breakfast. Make some sort of space where they can eat. Have them get their own breakfast because you need to teach them to be independent, but help them because you need to show them they are loved.” And so the internal contradictions begin. This is just the start of what will be a day full of unmet expectations and yet more reasons made up to beat down on myself. 

“Are you feeling okay?” A question I never quite know how to answer. I had managed to put on my “normal” face, shove down my thoughts and pain, and compartmentalize into the person I am supposed to be at work. So the lie slips out, “Yep”, because anything else could cause the truth to cascade out of the hole…the hole that the truth would punch in the box I’ve told myself to stay inside.

The day goes on trying to just push through. That’s when I see her.

One of my students is sitting in a discrete spot by the wall, her knees up by her face hugging her shins as she cries. I sit down by her and asked, “Can I sit here?” She peers out of her arms, says “yes” and wipes her tear-stained cheek mumbling “I’m sorry”. Holding back my own tears I tell her she doesn’t have anything to apologize for, its okay to cry.

We sit in silence.

I think about what it was like at 16 when this pain was new. I could have tried to pierce the silence with some inconsequential platitude, but I know 16-year-old me would have found that as isolating, so we continue to sit in silence.

Eventually I get out my purple grading pen and ask her to show me her arms. As I examine them I see the history I know all too well, the scars of times past where the emotional pain was too much. Despite the ashamed look of the student, I take my pen and begin to write. I pass the pen over the scars to write “You are loved” making one of them into a cross and further down closer to her hand making another into a butterfly. I look back up to her face to see her eyes squint with some kind of mix of appreciation and sadness. We hug and she goes off to find her friends.

This isn’t the end of her story and this isn’t the last time that she will struggle with the darkness of brokenness. I almost wrote the darkness of life just now, but that would be a contradiction. Because what is THE life is not darkness but light (insert Sunday school answer: JESUS!). The truth is that sometimes the darkness can swell and feel so overwhelming that you don’t know what to do or what’s possible. But it is also true that this darkness can never and will never overcome light. The sheer presence of light overcomes darkness by its very essence.

The darkness of evil has broken this world. But even in our darkest times, we are not separated from God, who is Light. We can and we will feel like a scared little girl with her arms wrapped around her knees, on the floor, afraid of the darkness around us, but that does not mean we do not also have life and the light.

We live in a time of the now and not yet, the sinner and saint, where the world is still broken yet we cling to the hope and promise through Jesus Christ of His conquering over sin and the devil for us.  In the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death, our dear shepherd continues to guide his sheep with his crook – his staff – through the valley to the feast he has prepared for us on the other side (Psalm 21)…the shepherd who knows His sheep and does not forsake them for He holds them in the palm of his hand (John 10:28).

The God who spoke creation into existence is the same God who felt pain and suffered for you. He already bore my pain, my shame, my guilt on the cross, so that just as He was raised from the dead, so too you would have newness of life in Him (Romans 6:3-5). As John writes, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

Sometimes it takes seeing someone else with a similar pain, to comfort them, that actually ends up reminding yourself of the goodness of God and His faithfulness. It’s why one of my favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 12:7 “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect.” In all the ways I try to make myself perfect and do everything on my own made-up list of what I think makes a good person, I forget that God doesn’t work according to what I think is best but according to His will and His way which works despite me. 

As morning’s dawn light breaks the darkness, so we await the dawn of Christ coming again to bring us into His eternal presence.

In the meantime, I will recall His promise for me and for all, not of my own will, but as a moon that shines the sun’s light…and I will sit with my sister in Christ on the dirty floor until she has the strength to get back up again.

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