Lessons from the Dark

My Steelers had just won the AFC and were heading to the Superbowl. My mother was wrapping up her visit to Kentucky. I had a great time painting pottery at Girls Night Out and I was standing in my kitchen with a cookie in one hand and a glass of milk in another when the power went out. I mean, blink and it was gone. I stood still for a long time. I mean a long time. I mean I didn't even eat the cookie.

I do not like the dark. I have never liked the dark and I have never overcome the panic I feel when I am left in the darkness. I fill it with every monster I can recall from childhood. I kept waiting for my eyes to adjust and in the meantime tried not to move so the monsters couldn't find me. After a lifetime, finally enough moonlight filled the room so I could find my way down the hall way to my room where I could wake up someone and have them be scared with me.

Nearly two weeks later, Superbowl Trophy in hand, I am finally out of the dark. I have had moments of light of course, but for the most part it has been dark and it has been chaotic. Schedules have been non existent, work has been off the charts and though I have run fast and hard, I have stayed behind. I have stayed weary and I have dreamt the most vivid things. In fact, I have been typical of many who endure a disaster. I just hate being typical. I had complained for several days about the room spinning and the floor feeling like it was moving under my feet. I cannot tell you how irritated I was to discover this too is a typical response to stress. More typical. How very humbling.

The world has changed. The trees are sad, they are broken and twisted. Many of them are dead, there has been much too much damage to save them. Many more look naked and deformed with tops missing, limbs gone. There are utility people everywhere. There are new poles going in all over the places, wires that for weeks have been resting on the ground are being reconnected or replaces. The sound of generators has been replaced with the sound of chainsaws. Yards filled with fallen trees are being cleared and the debris is lining the roadsides. We aren't recovered, but we are recovering and there is a sense of survival when people talk these days. We will be limping for sometime to come. There is much yet to glean from such moments in life, but for now here are a few things I have learned:

Such times truly to bring out the best in people, and also the worst. I have seen grown men cry as they shared opportunities to help others and I have seen people who were so self absorbed that I wanted to scream. I wanted to slap them silly but one is not allowed to confess such things. Why some people radiate good stuff and others do not is more than I can answer. I just know it is true.

Our minds are incredible filters that help us to process enormous amounts of stress and frustrations, fears and failings. God has wired us with His thumbprint and it evidences itself in so many ways. We dream away stuff we cannot deal with in our waking hours and we find wholeness in rest. That's amazing.

God wastes nothing. In the midst of devastation, He uses clean up crews to awaken the interest of people who have left the church years ago. Even in injury, God brings healing. This is grace. How good is that?! Even in death, I saw the gift of new life in a family who lost a mother but found that their needs would be supplied.

Even in hopelessness, a small ray remains. God nurtures the seeds of hope inside of us, so even when we feel that no hope remains, somehow we find that is has. Even in complete darkness, if you stand still long enough some tiny bit of light will find it's way in. I know this for a fact. And if you will wait for it, trusting in the darkness you will find light, you can eat the cookie. It's all about light, and a little about cookies.