It’s been over a year since I received the news of the diagnosis. The last 427 days recorded are among the darkest, most heartbreaking, and painful I’ve ever experienced. Someone recently asked, “What it’s like?”
My response: “It’s beyond all your wildest nightmares.”
Yet through it, I’ve stumbled into doing something Barbara Brown Taylor calls, “learning to walk in the dark.”
God is light, and we are children of the light. But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t know his way around the dark. During creation He separated light from darkness, poking holes in the inky blackness, hanging spinning stars above.
Atop Mount Sinai, Moses drew near to “the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21). During the final three hours Jesus hung like beef from a crooked tree, darkness covered the land (Matthew 27:45).
Darkness scares us. But it never scares God.
When we are thrust into the darkness, we are forced to learn to live more by faith than by sight.
The image that stained my mind is one of a long plank that grows narrower, the light growing dimmer, with each passing step. When we come to know Christ, the plank appears wide and sturdy. Everything shimmers bright like the noon sun reflecting off ocean’s waves.
But with each passing spiritual growth spurt, the plank goes thinner, wobbly beneath our toes. The Spirit nudges us forward.
“Follow me,” Jesus whispers. “I’m with you, even in this” the Father echoes.
Some resist, squatting on the plank, cradling it like a panda, determined they’ve gone far enough.
Others of us shuffle forward. Following Him. Looking much like fools. We stumble. Jesus lurches for our elbow, steadying our balance. Our eyes wander to the watery chaos below.
“Look up!” Jesus reminds, “Keep your eyes on me, the poet and maestro of your faith.”
This journey of following Christ continues year after year, triumph after triumph, tragedy after tragedy, with only one constant: His presence. The ever-narrowing plank becomes more flimsy, unstable, until one day the light disappears altogether, nothing rests beneath our feet.
“Will you trust me now?” Jesus whispers. “Will you follow me now?”
These two questions, “Will you trust me now?” and “Will you follow me now?”, are the ones I’ve had to answer daily for the last year.
Sometimes I resound, “Yes” with confidence, but on far more days, I’m so rattled by the darkness I begin shuffling backward.
Christ keeps nudging me forward into deeper surrender to Him.
The gift of darkness is that it makes us squint for God.
For me, squinting for God has found a practical expression in learning to #FightBackWithJoy. Over the last year I’ve been discovering that joy is more than whimsy, it’s a weapon we can use to fight life’s battles.
I covet your prayers for courage and strength as the team at Worthy and Lifeway put the finishing touches on Fight Back With Joy: Celebrate More. Regret Less. Stare Down Your Greatest Fears book and bible study. Keep your eyes peeled—both release January 7.
An Extra-Special-Super-Duper Surprise for YOU:
I just received a handful of advanced reader’s copies of the book, and I want to share them with you…my faithful readers who have become dear friends over the darkness of this past year.
Leave a comment below if you’d like to be entered to win one of three advanced reader copies and be some of the first to read Fight Back With Joy. The winners will be selected and notified on Friday.
Congratulations to the winners: Kathleen Brooks, Ann Hahn, Traci Harrison
[Tweet “Enter to win #FightBackWithJoy 4 months before it releases. “]
