The Comforting Embrace of Darkness

At 9:15 on Sunday night, the lights flickered and went out in our home. I tapped on my phone’s flashlight and went out front to see if it was just our house that lost power or the whole neighborhood. The neighborhood was dark. Even the street that is on a different power grid was dark.

The power company sent a text to my husband informing him they were working to restore electricity as soon as possible.

We got ready for bed and read our books by candlelight. When I blew the candle out, the darkness that surrounded was notable and familiar. The silence pronounced. A sense of comfortableness filled my being as I noticed the sound of my breath amidst the pitch-black darkness.

There was a time when such darkness would have scared me.

When I was eight years old, my parents took me to see Alien (1979). I was seven years old. I don’t know if there were film ratings back then, but in today’s standard, Alien is rated “R.” I actually don’t remember much of the movie, as I watched it though the gaps between my fingers while my hands covered my eyes. I do remember always checking the ceiling when entering rooms to make sure nothing was going to drop down on me, and being highly afraid that something would burst out of my abdomen anytime I had a stomach ache. Darkness was something to be feared because at any moment, an alien might spring out and gobble me up.

This fear of darkness and aliens was so deeply embedded in my being that not even the playing of “Brazzle Dazzle Day” from Pete’s Dragon before bed, every single night, at my brother’s insistence, could ease the anxiety I felt about going to sleep.

As the years passed and distance was put between me and the viewing of Alien, my fear subsided, but it also morphed into other irrational fears. Maybe it’s because I was a child of the 70s? But I was afraid of strangers kidnapping me. I was afraid of being home alone. I was and still am afraid of being eaten by a shark, because yes, my parents took me to see Jaws when I was very young, as well. Being dragged down into the abyss of darkness in the jaws of a shark is my worst nightmare.

During her middle and high school years, my daughter experienced significant emotional, mental, physical, and social challenges. Though I’d been a Christian for a number of years, something in me shifted during her high school years. My relationship with God changed as my parenting challenges mounted. Prayer and Bible study no longer were life giving or comforting. Singing worship songs and listening to three-point sermons produced only feelings of emptiness. Scripture verses that once gave comfort left me feeling alone and abandoned by God.

Thankfully during this time, I was a student at Portland Seminary. I remember my professor, Dr. Dan Brunner, saying, “There comes a time in your life where the things that once worked stop working.” I was deep in the middle of things not working anymore. In the spiritual life, I learned this is called a “dark night of the soul.” Often attributed to 16^th-century Spanish poet and mystic, St. John of the Cross, the dark night of the soul is part of an individual’s spiritual journey to becoming one with God.  During this stage, individuals experience purgation, or a shedding of ego and self-will. Confusion, disorientation, helplessness, and the sense that God is absent are also markers of this stage.^[1] For three-ish years, this was my reality.

I felt like I’d been dragged down into the dark and silent abyss of the ocean. I felt the water’s weight pressing down on me, suffocating me, isolating me from all I’d known and loved.

In seminary, I learned such seasons of spiritual darkness were not unusual. In fact, they were to be expected, especially for those who longed to be transformed into the image of Christ and abide more fully in Him. It was comforting to learn countless other Christ followers had experienced similar seasons of darkness; some even prayed for such seasons. It was encouraging to learn that Purgation didn’t get the final say in the journey, as Illumination and Union were waiting on the shore. But in the depths of darkness, it’s impossible to know when the end will come or how it will come. It’s impossible to know if the shark would spit me out so I could swim to the light of day, or if I’d rot in its gut for all of eternity.

During those years of darkness, I sensed an invitation- an invitation to surrender, to let go, and allow my senses to develop in new and unexpected ways. An alien never dropped down to kill me, nor did a shark gobble me up, though, in many ways, I did die. In that dying to myself, my dreams, and my understanding of what faith in God looks like, I learned to breathe holy. I learned to see differently, noticing the smallest glimmers of God’s grace. I learned to hear differently as I discerned God’s quiet, gentle whisper, reminding me I wasn’t alone. In time, I became comfortable in the uncomfortable, content in the darkness, and attentively present in the silence.

It has been a few years since my dark night of the soul, but when the power went out on Sunday, I was reminded of the painful yet gracious kindness of God’s presence that emerges and envelops when all else is stripped away. And while I’d never want to return to that season, the sense of security that overwhelmed me during the darkness of the power outage prompted me to wonder what needs to be cleared out of my daily interactions and actions so I can step back into that way of being again?

Photo by Ryan Parker on Unsplash

^[1] “Dark Night of the Soul.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed May 10, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul.