even in the dark

I'm afraid of the dark.

I remember one night when I was three or four years old, and the power went out sometime after I had gone to bed. I must have been used to sleeping with a nightlight, because the darkness was so black to me that it seemed almost palpable, like a thick and suffocating cloak of black fabric wrapped around me from head to toe. I tried to find my way to Mom and Dad's room but got stuck at my sister's crib and couldn't find my way out. I remember feeling nothing short of terror until Dad walked down the hall with a candle and rescued me.

I'd like to say I've grown out of that. While I have grown out of the childish fear that the darkness harbors some kind of man-eating monster, the real terror - the terror of being alone in the dark with my own mind - is something I've merely learned to function in spite of.

As Tyler Joseph says, "You think twice about your life - it probably happens at night, right?"

Always.

Some nights I stay up late with the lights on and the TV blaring so that my mind will give up the fight for loudest voice before I actually try to sleep. Other nights I lie in bed for hours, wide awake, head spinning with every worry and fear the Enemy can raise up - some semi-legitimate and some completely fabricated, but all exaggerated by the dark.

When I'm still awake at one in the morning, after my husband has already been asleep for hours, I feel cursed.

But the truth is that so many nights, God has met me here in the dark.

Some nights He comforts me with His Word.

Some nights I sing "What a Friend we have in Jesus" until my mind is quieted by the truth.

Some nights He cuts through my self-focused fretting by giving me someone else to pray for.

Maybe I'm not cursed, in the end. Maybe I am blessed that so often as I'm finally falling asleep, I've been freshly reminded that God is present, that God is good, that God is sovereign, and that God desires to spend time with me.

Even in the dark.

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? . . . . If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night," even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.
- Psalm 139:7, 11-12