It’s pitch black out tonight and we are late getting home. There are no street lights out here to light the way. The darkness cloaks the landscape like a blanket.We come up over the rise and the light beam from the headlights cuts through the night. The shadows rush away as light fills the space they once stood.
This is how I want to live my life. I long to live in the light,absorbing that glow and carry it with me everywhere. Even into the dark places especially the dark places. After all, dark cannot remain when light shines bright. The inky blackness is forced to surrender to the illumination.
But what if the darkness exists within taking up space where light should reside?What about fear? Unbeckoned it fills the empty places smothering the hope for tomorrow.
The ache of not being enough, not belonging.Of failing them. The haunting terror of medical prognosis. The dread of not having enough to make ends meet. These fears play like reruns ..a lingering side effect of days gone by when provision was thin and hope just as sparse. These were days weighed down by the dark.
And what of the doubts? Faith is hard to stand on when a contrasting reality stares unblinkingly back at you. Endless ‘What ifs’ ring loudly through this mind because what I see is in conflict with what I want to believe. I want the light .. but all I see are Shadowlands.
What about the hurts? I wonder how much of a beating can one heart take? Can my heart take, before it gives up ..falls casualty to this flawed reality?
I’ve carried a shattered heart before. Juggling all its jagged edges, hands bleeding from the shards while trying to patch it back together and work out how to avoid the same again. I became warden to my own failing heart. Keeping it close, under guard, tethered and restrained.How else is one to avoid the pain. I’ve taken the time to construct the walls even dug the moats needed to keep my heart from harms reach.
I became an expert at camouflage…a mask can hide a million scars ..nothing fits so well as an engineered smile and like a pro I excelled at the dance.Gave my everything except this heart. Never to be vulnerable but always untouchable. Never to be burnt again.
But high walls, masks, and what-ifs serve only to dim the light further.Allowing the darkness to gain ground and in the blackness, I become more afraid of what I can’t see. Im claustrophobic here… breathless and suffocated. Alone despite the crowd. My own fortress is now my gilded cage.
I want to love outrageously. Live uninhibited. Dream big and run fearlessly headlong into tomorrow. This is difficult to achieve when one is walled in and distracted with playing pretend.I’ve learned that safe comes at a price.The cost, a life half lived.
No this isn’t for me… the cost, this one life, is to great a price to pay for preservation.
Light, I’ve found, holds its own promise. Light is life to the fullest.
In pursuit of this, I’ve learned to tear down the walls, take off the mask. Silence the inner chatter. I trade the pretence for honesty in all its flawed beauty. Vulnerability once a foe is now my friend. I become a builder of bridges. I risk this heart to feel alive again and let this little light shine out bright.
And I’ve found that just like my drive home when this light shines true the clearer my road ahead becomes and further the darkness recedes. Clarity and truth are gifts of the light. Direction is easier to find when I can see the road that lays ahead.No more do I stumble blinded by the dark.
Light leaves nothing hidden. It ushers in truth. Light is unquenchable in its desire to shine.If allowed it floods in pushing the darkness out.Leaving freedom in its wake.
I’m left vulnerable, mask less, honest and alive …not afraid of what I can’t see as my focus remains only on where the light leads. Distractions like shadows melt away. The light brings purpose.
My world has come alight, my life follows suit. Far from perfect but complete in its imperfections. The dark doesn’t scare me now. Light has come melting my defences and chasing that consuming blackness away. On those days where the mask is appealing and the what-ifs beckon, I’m learning to focus this light, silence that noise and not take the bait.
Night shift 