The Longing in the Dark

I stood at the kitchen window last night and gazed into the black. A chill crept up my spine as I thought the potential of evil peering back at me unaware. I shook off the chill and cupped my mug of tea to my chest retreating into the lamplight to quell the darkness.

The unknown is the scariest kind of dark. 

Back in the Spring we were excited about another New Year's baby on the way. That baby was not meant to be held in our arms. God called deep to my heart to trust that the future was not as dark as that moment begged me to believe.

Three years after moving home from West Africa and nine years of marriage and we still can't seem to put down roots. My fear takes on the shape of a home I've never seen, afraid I will never see it, the longing is my darkness.

I have wondered if God dropped the ball. I have thrown a Job-like tantrum with an assault of questions over my lack of clairvoyance. I want to know. I want to know that the darkness lifts and that my heart of hearts is heard and carried in all it's fragility by a God who is guiding me with light in a dark world.

I think our deepest unfulfilled desires are an invitation to two things. Unfulfilled hope is a beckoning from God to trust boundlessly that He stands on the other side of the dark with a sun-sized flashlight to illuminate all our struggles. But in our dark hearts it can also be an enticement to walk a razor edged cliff in the dark of night without hope.

I admit I'm prone to go it alone on the cliff's edge when I should be walking in faith that God's light will shine clear in the midst of the unknown. The book of John has always done my writer's heart good to read and the way the author speaks about the tension between light and dark has always reached into the depths of me.

John brazenly proclaimed that we are lovers of the dark. We have the light of the world, Jesus, yet we gravitate again and again toward the dark. We're content to muddle our way through blind then to cling to the only light that our world can hope in. 

What are the longings you find creating a tension between the darkness and the light in your own life? 

{We're a week in to #write31days #chasinglight and tomorrow I'm going to lean in tighter to this notion that we love darkness rather than light. I want to be a lover of the light. We're headed that direction, but first we have to wade through the darkness in our own hearts.}