Dawn on Our Darkness, Lend Us Your Aid - Issue #47

The Christmas decorations aren't just pretty and nostalgic anymore. (Although I love pretty and nostalgic.) But they help me broadcast to myself and whoever happens to notice, that light has come into the world.

I am not well...again. I am having another symptom flare as I did when I first put the Christmas decor up. Symptom flares are beyond frustrating and beyond disruptive. They quash my deepest dreams, ambitions and plans. They remind me of all the ways my body keeps me from being the wife, homemaker, mother, writer and doer I most want to be. And I am exhausted in every way possible.

I was talking to Jonathon about it today.

"Why," I asked, "is this bothering me so much? Why must I keep protesting? Why can't I just roll with it?"

In so many words, he pointed out that my deepest, most core motivations are at odds with my reality and frequently at odds with what motivates many other people.

The inner longing of my soul is, in many ways, encapsulated in that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem "A Psalm of Life."

Tell me not in mournful numbers

Life is but an empty dream

For the soul is dead that slumbers

And things are not as they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal.

From dust thou art, to dust returneth

Was not spoken to the soul...

Art is long and Time is fleeting

And our hearts, though stout and brave

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave...

Let us then be up and doing

Not so long ago, I was struck by some words by a different author.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. -- Jack London

My time is short. I am intensely driven to use my time. Not squander it, waste it, watch it slip by. I want to do my best in everything I undertake. I long for, I crave perfection. I am driven to get to the deepest meaning...the meaning under the meaning where God, Himself, lives. I want to create what is most beautiful, because beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is an objective reality that God created.

I don't want to be just a wife, I want to be fully and in every way what a wife is meant to be. I don't want to keep just a home. I want that home to be an oasis for other souls to come to and rest and be refreshed. I don't want to be just a writer, churning out trite, predictable nonsense for predictable cash. I want my writing to tell the best story...the story that, no matter how the plot line changes, it tells the deepest truth.

I want to be up and doing because that is what God meant for us when he created a man and a woman and put them in a garden to tend and care for it.

But they fell and were driven from paradise, my forefathers. They passed the curse to me, and my body doesn't work like theirs did. In fact, it doesn't even work as well as most of the people living in cursed bodies around me.

And I watch so many wandering around, wasting their time on useless pursuits, chasing things that don't matter or trembling at imaginary bogeymen, letting fears turn them away from worthy pursuits and saying, "I don't want that" to mask the truth, content to coast, losing themselves to hours of aimless scrolling, bathed in the pale blue light of a smart phone screen. What a waste.

When I am hampered by my body with the up and doing, a scream starts deep inside me and crashes in deafening waves against my skull. The darkness begins to close in, and I feel like I'm drowning. It feels that I am purposefully laid flat with my hands tied behind me, to watch the sand in the hour glass fall to the chamber below. That I must sit and watch my life run out and do nothing that matters. What's worse is watching those fitter, healthier and smarter than me, waste the time God has gifted them...from the confines of my bed.

This is my darkness.

But light has come into the darkness, as the lights burning on the Christmas tree at the end of my bed have reminded me more than once this month.

Hail the blest morn, see the great mediator

Down from the regions of glory descend.

Shepherds go worship the babe in the manger

Lo! for his guard the bright angels attend.

Cold on his cradle the dew drops are shining

Low lies his bed, with the beasts of the stall.

Angels adore him, in slumber reclining,

Wise men and shepherds before him do fall.

Say, shall we yield him, in costly devotion,

Odors of Eden and offerings divine,

Gems from the mountain and pearls from the ocean,

Myrrh from the forest and gold from the mine?

Vainly we offer each ample oblation,

Vainly with gifts we his favor secure;

Richer by far is the heart's adoration,

Nearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

Brightest and best of the stars of the morning,

Dawn on our darkness and lend us thy aid.

Star in the east, our horizon adorning,

Guide where our infant redeemer was laid.

This is the light shining in my darkness.

The song these words belong to is strong fare. Driving, martial, fierce. It's the kind of song that when sung by a weakling like me who means it and believes it, makes the Devil tremble. Because if my time is short on earth, so is his. My end will be my beginning, but his end will be his destruction. There will come a time where whatever hand he has played in my life will be stopped forever. The Light of the world will end him.

I know I am not the only one beating back the darkness right now. Some of you were born with an extra dose of...instinctive awareness...and the dark is always close at hand. Some of you are facing this Christmas for the first time after putting someone you loved to rest in the grave. Some of you are seeing the death of a relationship. Some of you are sick. Some of you are dying, and some of you are in that never, never waiting land watching someone you love decline. They are never going to get better, only worse. You are not okay. The dark tunnel, is long indeed.

Don't give the Devil the satisfaction of your despair. Sing the carols, even through your tears. Put up the lights, and remember what they mean.

Tell Him, "I love you, my Light and my Salvation. You will deliver me from the body of this death."

Weep and wail and mourn when you must. And then, when it's all over, be up and doing again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat as necessary.

That's all for now. Until next time, folks...