On the Dark Side

Posted by simpleysterling on Mar 31, 2010 | 2 comments

The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle. ~ Stephen King (Night Shift)

I am almost forty years old and I still get afraid of the dark.  It’s an irrational fear, to be sure, but fear is fear, right?  Now I am not as afraid as I used to be… As a child, I was terrified! I could not be in a dark room alone without some kind of light to guide me, comfort me, soothe me.  And even if I was not alone (I had eight brothers and sisters in a two bedroom home… C’mon!  I was NEVER alone!), sometimes, as I lay in the dark, I could hear the voices calling me, whispering my name.  And if I held oh, so still, maybe “they” would go away; other times, I could literally feel “them” pulling the covers off the bed, reaching their icy cold hands from under the bed, waiting for the opportunity to wrap them around me and drag me off to zombieland… Yikes!  You might laugh it off and say what a vivid imagination I had as a child, but there are still those occasions….

We all had a fear of something as children, an irrational fear that really did have an identifiable base, but just grew by leaps and bounds as we dwelled on that fear.  And some of us have a list of fears that is a mile-and-a-half long, encompassing everything from snakes to needles, from spiders to taxi cab drivers, and from mice to clowns.  The bottom line is that while we even may realize that our fears are irrational, most of us will carry those fears throughout the remainder of our lives.

Remember I mentioned that I still have a fear of the dark?

But the dark I fear now is much different than the dark I feared as a child.  As an adult, I have witnessed firsthand the dark side of humanity; I have seen death; I have experienced torment; I have lost faith in humanity; I have questioned God.  As U2 so aptly puts it, “I have held the hand of a devil.”   I see in myself “the dark side”, that part of me that I never want anyone to know about, that part I work hard to fix, to make better, to beat into submission.  I have to recognize that in me, there is that potential to hurt others, to have addictions, and to lie, cheat and steal.  And to be brutally honest, we all have that potential.  ”This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19).

God has given us amazing hope through His grace and His love; He has given us the gift of redemption through His son Jesus.  Ever since I accepted that gracious gift, I have begun a transformation that will continue as I trod through this world with all its pathways and even its dark places.  But I know now that I carry a light within me, a beacon that illuminates those dark places for what they are. Because while there will always be the darkness, I am never alone; I have the Light to guide me, to comfort me, to soothe me. As long as I remain aware of the darkness lurking in the world, that darkness lurking inside of me, and I can deal with the voices that beckon me, because the Light chases away the darkness with the flip of a switch.

Have you found the Light yet?

Catch you on the flip side!

Ang

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