Learning To See In The Dark

The surest way for me to tell if things are off is when I can’t see. Not in actual terms—although there was a period of time when a thing on my eyelid caused my vision to blur—but in a way where what is right in front of me doesn’t make it past my eyes, through my mind, and into my heart. When I’m finding myself not in awe of beauty, it’s time to search my soul.

The reasons for not seeing are many. The month of September bled into October, which rolled right through November. A calendar full of dots—of things to do—with no stopping for a Sabbath is a sure shot way for days to lose their sacredness. There’s a reason why God commanded us to rest. He knew we would be prone to believing that we rule the world, which never ends well. It’s hard to see when you don’t stop moving.

It’s hard to see when things aren’t as you think they should be. That is the world today. Can I get an amen? It can also be inside the four walls of your home or zooming in inside the four chambers of your beating heart. Instead of letting go, I tighten my grip. Instead of taking a walk and letting nature speak, I set scenes in my mind. If there ever was a seeing-stopper, those expectations starve a far more beautiful reality, hard as it sometimes may be.

It’s 60 degrees in December, so I sit on my porch as I type this. In my view, trees lay bare, preparing for resurrection. But first, advent. An invitation into the mystery of waiting in the dark.

How do we learn to see in the dark?

The scene is silent as I type, save the birds talking and a stream running in the distance. It’s a stream that only exists when it rains like it has this week. We didn’t live here in the winter last year, so I only know a wall of vivid green off my back porch. In July, the fireflies buzz in between here and there, and I swear there is no greater sign of the whimsy nature of God than fireflies. Or do you call them lightning bugs? We are a house divided.

In the midst of all those dots on the calendar, summer gave way to fall, green turned yellow and orange and red, and now those branches tell us a lesser-known part of their story. Where they formally adorned life, they now sit exposed, muted in tone. To be honest, I quite like it. The browns and whites pair nicely with their evergreen neighbors, who remind us to hope if we let them. The leaves are down, and the days are short, but now I can see.

What was once a tree line is now an invitation to see something different. To reflect on what was there and imagine what is to come. The forest floor is littered with fallen leaves, drawing you into the seemingly haphazard maze that is in this neighborhood of trees. There is no rhyme or reason to how branches grow, or maybe there is, after all. The trunk knows the whole story, at least that’s what I tell myself, constantly shuffling nutrients from the ground and energy from the sun. I wonder if the tops of those branches ever consider their roots, how far they reach, how far they have come?

My daughter excitedly told me the other day she learned that sap is like the blood of a tree and that it sometimes comes out in a form that ends up on our pancakes. She will never look at a maple tree the same again. She’s six, and as far as I can tell, she hasn’t experienced vision blockers—things like pain and regret.

Some days I’m overwhelmed by how much I’ve seen. We are told to be like little children. To be endlessly curious and forever asking. To seek God in all things. To shake the cynicism that so easily erodes our sense of wonder. To acknowledge the hurt and somehow find a way to let it go. To remember that we aren’t God. To those, the kingdom of heaven belongs.

But what about the hurt you can’t seem to get past, you say? That’s been the loudest nag, the greatest blocker of my vision. When I set out to write a book about repentance, at least in part, I knew there would be a time or two I would rub up against my shadow. It occurred to me the other day I had lost sight of the mercy shed on me. That comes out all sorts of ways with names like anger, pride, and resentment, and you can bet functioning from there for too long doesn’t end in a circle singing kumbaya. This message of forgiveness has been ringing in my ears from seemingly every angle these days. Could this be the way to see in the dark? My answers had certainly run dry. At the end of myself, I keep hearing these words. “Lord, teach me to pray.”

“This, then, is how you should pray:

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, As it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Matthew 6:9-14

The good thing about these verses is that I didn’t write them. I’m too human, too not God, to have penned something that so obnoxiously pricks my flesh. I guess what I read is this. If we desire so deeply mercy for ourselves, then we must extend it to one another. No BUT. But I love that word! I had a wise friend tell me that forgiveness is a vortex of trickiness—my paraphrase of her words. Something was done to you, hurt you, that brought death and not life. That something is as real as the sun rising every morning. That’s just part of living in the conditions that we do. But that thing that hurt you can grow into something that looks like a death worse than what was done. It can look like letting darkness take your sight.

Unforgiveness breeds blindness—perhaps the greatest blindness of all—the multitudes of ways you have been shown mercy in your time of need. It’s hard to see God when you forget that you have been forgiven. So how do we learn to see in the dark? It’s not neatly wrapped up in a bow; it rather feels like the stripped-to-the-bone bare and muted like the trees off my back porch. What looks like death is an invitation to wait. And see.

After all, the hope of the world came in the middle of the night.

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