When Your Eyes Adjust {Too Well} to the Dark

 moonlight

 I’ve been practicing my night vision again. It’s become a regular thing, this stumbling my way in blackness.

You see, my body simply refuses to let me sleep through the night any more, constantly waking me with these middle-of-the-night bladder urges. {Menopause is not for the weak of heart!} But it doesn’t seem fair to wake my husband who starts the day much earlier than me. So a couple times a night, I toss off my down comforter and depend on my toes to alert me to any unforeseen obstacles as I stumble my way in pure darkness to the bathroom.

And each night as I walk those fifteen steps, I {once again} remind myself the intimidating silhouettes in my peripheral vision are the same things they were when I tucked myself under the sheets earlier.

Funny thing is, as I spend more and more time in the dark my eyes eventually adjust.  I stumble through, groping my way along walls, defaulting to what I think I know is there. And somehow it works. No one else wakes, and I soon head to bed a much less neurotic woman with a lighter bladder.

But in other corners of my life, it doesn’t work as well. {Or maybe it’s working too well?}There seem to be some areas where I still fumble around trying to find the way. These are painful places I never wanted to be but for some reason keep landing there. Places where careless words have somehow caused harm yet pride gets in my way. Places where insecurities scream that I’ll never be enough, or areas where the lie of the daily routine clamors for my sole attention.

This darkness, it keeps me from living the full, free life God intends.

It isn’t something I can always do on my own, this lifting myself out of the darkness and making my way back to the Light. But I’m learning that those places I never wanted to be, those areas of hurt, pride, and lies—those are the sort of places where a healing hope is born.

Glenn Clark, author of I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes, understands. He tells the parable of a raindrop that desperately craved to be in the light but was instead stuck in a mud puddle. A raindrop once clear and pure, free-falling from a beautiful cloud, now found itself stuck in a dirty mud puddle on the side of a road. Trapped, crying out for escape.

This raindrop, she struggled to break free, wrestling fiercely with the muck and the mire only to become deeper entrenched in the sediment—the darkness at the bottom. Eventually, she realizes she has to turn away from the sediment and turn toward the sun, fully giving herself to it. She learned to focus on the sun, to give herself “unresistingly to the drawing power of its rays (Harper & Row, 1937, p220).’

No matter how dark it is at times, and no matter how much we’ve grown accustomed to it, how about we choose this day to turn upward and behold the Son, to make an intentional choice and lean into Jesus as he leads us out of any darkness that tempts discord in our lives?

{Meanwhile, won’t you guys pray for me about those multiple bathroom trips? Cause I could sure use a good night’s sleep.}

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4 thoughts on “When Your Eyes Adjust {Too Well} to the Dark

  1. My Dear Jo Ann,
    Please send me your address. I will send you the best little tool I have come across in a long time. It is a very small LED flashlight that can be hung on a keychain or one of those plastic coils that go over your wrist.
    My cellphone and my little flashlight stays in bed with me, on the other pillow.
    This is how I light my way to the bathroom 2-3 times a night.
    Yes, I am in one bedroom and hubby is in the other bedroom. I can use that tiny flashlight during the night to check on him without waking him up.
    You see, I understand about the stumbling around in the darkness. It is way too dangerous for me to do that at my age.

    Now, about that other darkness you are talking about.
    Yes, there are times when I think I have overcome that, but then something rears its ugly head and reminds me that yes, I do still have some anger issues, some places where I can still be deeply hurt.
    And what do I do? Okay, I admit it. I sink down in that darkness for a little while and just let it cover me. What? Oh, yes I do! Because I want to be alone to cry, to sulk, to wallow.
    Then, suddenly! Oh, how I just love those Suddenlies!!!
    Suddenly, there comes a light at the end of that long dark tunnel.
    Then, I get such a longing to come up out of that pit of darkness.
    I want to be back in the light. The light of the day. The light of the Sun.
    The light of TRUTH, the light of THE SON, Jesus Christ, who is my Redeemer.
    He is the one who reaches His hand down and pulls me back up into the light.
    We hurt, no matter the light or the dark. But the light of the Son is the one who can wipe away those tears, that pain and anger, the fear.
    Oh how I long to be in Heaven where it will be Light and there will never be any darkness again.

    • You are so sweet, Pat. I’m good now though most days– have learned the path to the bathroom and make it through okay. And oh how I too love those “suddenlies!” Thank God for the redemption that sits in the middle of any dark situation. You are precious indeed.

  2. My mother in law hate me so much that she wanted me out of my husband house because i have been unable to give her a grandchild i never knew what to do one day when i was at my working place a friend of my told me about how she had a spell cast on her by this man named Ekaka and after which her life came back to normal so i chosen to give him a trier which i did contacted him on his email: ekakaspelltemple@yahoo.com after which he get back to me and told me what i need to do and also how my problem was going to be solve and after 1month i started seeing changes in me i and so happy now that i can now give birth to my own child and my mother in law is now happy with me since i have been pregnant for her son.

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