“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” - John 1:5
Darkness has always played an unwelcome role in my life. As a child I was terrified of it, waking often to the feeling of an unwelcome presence in the room.
I have vivid memories of being so afraid that I could hardly breathe, let alone move. The fear was too powerful to jump out of bed and run to my parents room or turn on the light. Instead I would pull my head under the blankets, vainly hoping it was an impenetrable shield, praying whatever it was would just leave me alone.
Darkness can do that can’t it? Paralyse us?
And how much more true it is of our very own souls.
There are many places within us that we’re so afraid of we either pretend they don’t exist or simply hide under the covers of our everyday distractions. We numb ourselves to them, pretend they’re not as bad as they really are and wish them away.
These monsters in the rooms of us are our deepest shames, our sense of failure, self-hatred, lust, rejection or abandonment. They dwell in the darkness within, terrifying us. Living on autopilot we subconsciously attempt to domesticate rather than truly face them. Because actually eradicating them would mean getting out of the bed of our fragile equilibrium, turning the lights on and facing them head on.
This can be a paralysing prospect. So instead we stay under the false security of our warm but ultimately insecure blankets, convincing ourselves doing nothing is the better choice, dwelling in the darkness, living in fear of exposure.
But then, Advent.
Advent is the story of the light of unceasing Love entering this very space. That means something not only for the single historical event of Christ’s incarnation, but in our living in the spirit of it today. Because John doesn’t tell us that we, with all our darkness, enter the light of God. But instead that heaven’s light invades our darkness.
Light pursues our terrored nights.
The Good News is that when Christ comes to us what he finds doesn’t surprise or drive him away. Instead he experiences our shame, and unbearable feelings as us and continues to love us in the midst.
To truly know God, to truly experience his love, we have to turn inward to those roaming monsters that have lurked around within us for years. To our darkness. Not to relive the pain, but to open it up to Love.
Communion is about trusting God there and turning toward him right in the middle of our painful feelings of shame, guilt, lust, fear, dirtiness or self-hate. Just as Jesus was sown in the dark womb of Mary, healing humanity from the inside out, so now through the Holy Spirit, we must let him be sown in our very dark depths that he too may heal us.
Here, prayer becomes a risky, vulnerable co-sharing of not only the good that makes us human (our light) but the horror that imprisons us (our darkness). That’s Advent, our living life in a perpetual opening up of all this terror to God, trusting His love to sweep in and be with us there.
So how do we do that? How do we open up our darkness to God?
All it involves is a gentle turning toward God when we’re feeling or experiencing the pang’s and pain’s of our unbearable feelings. We might say, “Good Father, here I am”, or simply imagine our souls turning toward him and facing him as we experience it.
What matters is our being with God in the midst of it. Allowing him to love and sit in our pain. Giving him the opportunity to love us there.
That’s important, the being-togetherness. Because we’re not necessarily looking for instant healing, nor a mental conversation. We’re not wrestling with the emotions or trying to overcome them, we’re simply learning to be with God as we feel them.
Allowing transformation to come through the presence of God, not willpower.
Friend, whatever your darkness and however overwhelming it feels, it is not an obstacle to intimacy with God but an invitation. It’s precisely there that God’s powerful love is most meaningfully experienced.
May you open up today, in the spirit of Advent, to the Light that is unafraid of the monsters that roam in the darkness of your soul, that you may experience the true liberation of Christmas, this Love that pursues us, even to the catacombs.
All my love,
Strahan.
If you would like a resource to help practice this kind of opening up to God in the midst of our true feelings and experiences, check out my ‘Window of The Soul’ exercise in the Beholding Prayer Podcast or read Beholding, my own story of discovering the liberation of seeing and be seen by God.
Only 2 comments, and 2 likes!?! Awesome post (Starbucks ad aside)...
Great post, keep 'em coming...
I love all of your work Strahan. Thank you for sharing yourself with the world.