Take Heart
I haven’t sat down to write since June. We have been in crisis since February, but at first we could see the path in front of us. This summer, the path became so dark that we had to sit down. We couldn’t continue forward for even another step.
Is this what the Valley of the Shadow of Death is? The “Dark Night of the Soul?” When the world around you appears so bleak that your shuffled footsteps forward come to a halt, and your wildly groping arms in front of you fall in surrender to your side? You sit down because there is no longer any way to see what lies ahead.
You no longer know if the path is leading you to the very end of a cliff, to an impassable sea, or to a cave that ultimately will swallow you whole.
My very first pastor would proclaim with passionate abandon during sermons, “I know, that I know, that I know.” And I loved him for it. But right now, the only thing that I know is that darkness is darkness is darkness. Psalm 88:18 resonates with this well - “you have taken from me friend and neighbor -- darkness is my closest friend.”
You go through all the training, adoptive parents. You attend all the training classes, foster parents. You read all the books, special needs parents. But there isn’t anything quite like that initial plunge into darkness with your child that makes you think, “I don’t know if I can do this any longer?”
It seems our nine-year-old son is mentally ill. And he has resorted to hurting us. His violent rages have shaken our household and our very souls, and we have had to call 911 far more times than we ever imagined possible. He has been hospitalized 4 times, lived with guardians for a month, and now he is home again. Every minute of every hour is hard, and I don’t know how to share light with you in the darkness, except to quote Jesus in the hours before his very own dark night of the soul.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
Trouble isn’t something we have to wonder about. It’s not a question. Jesus didn’t say, “you may have trouble.” You and I will ABSOLUTELY have trouble, and it may in fact catapult us into terrifying dark-night-of-the-soul seasons. But none of these troubles come as a surprise to Jesus, no matter how long we find ourselves trapped in the dark.
All we can decide to do today is get up and move one step forward, with our arms held cautiously in front of us. That cliff in front of us? Jesus had been pushed to the very end before turning right back around and walking safely through the crowd of lunatics ready to stone him in Luke 4:29-30. That impassable sea? God made a path right through it for the Israelites in Exodus 14. And that cave? David used the darkness to hide him from the very one about to kill him in 1 Samuel 24. Our mighty God knew how to deliver his people from remarkable circumstances, and there’s no reason He won’t do so again.
