Feeling through the dark...

It's three in the morning. About thirty minutes ago my son woke me up. He wasn't feeling well. It's a migraine. I was holding him for a few minutes, softly kissing his forehead, when he asked me for medicine. Poor thing. How bad does a kid have to feel to ask for medicine? I knew I couldn't turn a light on in my room because it would make him feel worse. So I laid him next to me, tucked him in my bed and, in the dark, crawled out of bed feeling my way through with my hands, feet and my memory. On my hands and knees I crossed my bedroom floor in the pitch dark to get to my purse. I reached in and found my pill box. I have several pills in it–vitamins, a decongestant, papaya capsules, hyaluronic acid and ibuprofen. I carefully felt each pill until I found what I was looking for. I had to do this blindly and faithfully. I was giving my son a pill I couldn't see in the dark.

To face our darkest moments, we sometimes have to go on our hands and knees. This physical and metaphorical posture gives us stability while our world seems to rock around us. It also gives us a sense of closeness to ourselves, to our inner selves, to our real selves. It is a form of surrendering. Inching our way through in the dark, a quiet courage grows within us helping us find what we are looking for. In our darkest moments, our memory of who we are and where we came from becomes the spark that lights from within the path of hope. As I sit here in the darkest part of this night, I remember darker moments still that I have overcome. I blindly felt through them until the morning came.

In the dark, we not only feel our way around our physical space with our hands, we feel our emotional and spiritual way through with our hearts. We feel anger, resentment, our aching hearts, confusion, frustration, pain and fear. When facing our darkest moments, we also face the choices we have made up to that moment. In the dark, we see ourselves more clearly. We become vulnerable and willing to see differently–and that's when transformation takes place, that's when the light enters the dark, that's when miracles happen.

Today is a good day to surrender to the sadness, the loss, the uncertainty. Do not give into it, just surrender it, do not resist it. It is in this hour that you are most loved and protected. Let go and rest in the knowledge that the sun will break this night.