I apologize for my last post.  My college roommate said she hated it—that I should never to do that again.  After a brief rehab session with my precious husband, I am better.  But I do think I have, for the first time in my life, fallen to the ground, face down, eyes closed, darkness surrounding and coursing through my veins, desperate to escape the crushing sorrow and limitless emptiness.  It’s a scary, scary place to be. But I also believe in a God who loves me and wants more than anything to pick up my limp body and mind and spirit and just enfold me in His arms. After all…..Darkness—utter and total and hopeless—is God’s perfect canvas.

I have cracked one eye slightly, though, and discovered I am alive, I can still only see through that glass darkly, but I can see—I really can—a few pinpoints of light. Just a few—like when dusk settles in on a cloudless night and you see the very first stars. They’re tiny….and they don’t seem to make much difference, actually. But then another tiny light catches your eye to the east…..and then another to the north. And before you know it, the sky is twinkling with all sorts of possibility, all manner of hope, thousands and thousands of tiny angels peeking through. So I know God has begun His painting of a new me, much like He paints the sky, new every night and every day. He will continue painting, inspired by the utter darkness of my canvas, even while I sleep. I don’t have to watch Him paint—just trust his unfailing and exquisite artistry and remain willing to look in the mirror when He’s finished….and smile.

I have a habit that my friends, except for one or two, find strange. I love to wake up in the dark, especially when no one else is awake. I have my standards, though.  As my sister and I have said, we’ll get up in the fours, but we refuse to get up in the threes.  Must be genetic from our daddy, but we consider it a gift.  This morning, I looked east out the bay of windows that frames our pasture to the early morning sky, just as I always do. But this morning, I saw the beginnings of a sunrise unlike any I had seen before.  Only a ragged ribbon of light, intensifying more slowly than most sunrises, but brilliant—unique and brilliant. My little photograph does not begin to capture how breathtaking it was, but here it is:

That strange light—unusually, almost eerily, prolonged in place this morning and coming after this unusual, eerie, and prolonged darkness—has to symbolize something.  I truly don’t know what at this point, but I’m willing to listen and receive.  And I thank God for supplanting my will with His own.

MERH