Darkness

 “...new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

― Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

Mo Trouble and I have a pretty firm morning routine.

We begin our day by touching all the chores - we put the tea kettle on, we start a load of laundry, we make the bed, we change out the dishes, and we think about what will be for dinner.

Then, I put my shoes on - he gets his harness on - and we go out the door for our morning walk/run/pull/chase/bark.

This last week we get to the shoes on step and it's not daylight.

I've been torn.

Part of me likes to get our walk done early. Before school buses. Before my own kids wake with needs of their own. Before.

It's also hard to walk Mo in the dark. Leash training has not been mastered and walking him is a full contact, all hands on deck sport. Turns out the people in my neighborhood are litterers. Keeping Mo from eating trash is a top priority on our walk.

So most mornings I wait for daylight.

I hung these solar lights on our porch to gift us some light while we wait.

It turns out this week I've realized I'm a little uncomfortable in darkness.

I'm always searching for light.

This past week I finished an audiobook emphasizing the importance of learning to walk in darkness.

The author elaborated that there are lessons in darkness we never learn in the light.

Unless we sit in the hard, we never truly come through it. We are constantly circumventing the lesson.

We are surrounded, as usual it seems, with hard stages with all of our people lately.

Stages that require hard conversations. Asking big questions. Enforcing tough boundaries.

Darkness.

This week as I sipped my tea in the dark I realized that the more you sit in the dark, the more comfortable you become with darkness.

And the easier it is to see the light.

Your eyes adjust. Over time.

Mama Warriors, maybe you , like me, are walking in the dark.

Maybe you, your marriage, relationships, kids are in hard seasons. Maybe it feels like you are fumbling in the darkness.

I encourage you to LEAN IN. Live in the darkness.

Until you can see the light.

The light is always there.