dailydatewithgod

The hardest time to be a witness to the light and the most needed time to be a witness to the light is when we are in darkness.  It is what we need the most, yet have not the slightest clue how to connect with.  For most of my 20s, until I got into recovery, I suffered from clinical depression.  It was something that ran in my father’s side of the family.  Besides the sense of hopelessness, there was this feeling of constantly being under a cloud of darkness. It was not a feeling of being sad all the time, it was a sense of feeling nothing.  I could see light all around me and I clung to it where I could in any way that I could, but it would not stay.  Each day I found myself back under the cloud.  Looking back on it now, I can see there was a lot in my life that I had not yet faced.  I trust that it was not yet time. By facing the darkness which overwhelmed my mind would prepare me to trust I would be able to face the darkness in my own heart. I remember very distinctly that when I started taking medication, I would get these waves of remembrance of a time when I didn’t feel that way.  It was amazing.  It had sunk in so deep I had forgotten there was a time when it wasn’t so hard to stay in the light.  The medication for me poked holes in the darkness.  The doctor called it a chemical imbalance, but all I knew was that whatever it was doing it was restoring me to some kind of baseline from which I could operate like a normal human being.  It wasn’t such a struggle to take a shower anymore and I didn’t have to exhaust myself being so overly happy.  It was a relief to sense that somehow the light found its way back to me.  I believe in our hearts where God dwells is this very light that is always there and as bright as ever.  Sometimes our minds disconnect from it and forget how to make their way back.  It is like it left breadcrumbs but someone got on the path and ate them.  When God finds a way to help us reconnect with the light within us, we can move and breathe and be in the way we were meant.  My life did not go perfectly after I started taking medication.  I have learned there are very few straight paths in life.  I believe it was a part that eventually would get me into a recovery room where I felt safe enough to begin to open the wounds in my heart that existed side by side with the light (the one’s that hurt the most) but could not see.  We all have experiences of darkness in our lives whether it is a medical condition, an idea, a person, or an experience where we forget how to reconnect with the light we are in most need of and long for.  God wants to help us return to the truth of who we are which is light and love even if the path to do so may not be the one we were expecting.