Only in the darkness of night the stars smile and whisper among themselves. Joyce Rupp
Entering a dark room expecting to be frightened is not my thing. I hate the unexpected especially when it is paired with the jumping-out-of-my-skin feeling. I reluctantly reflect on Joyce Rupp’s entering the cave from her book, Come Home, Dear One. For Rupp, the cave with its murkiness can also be a place that protects and nurtures rebirth. In its contained space the lack of light moves us to depend on insight from the past and transformation happens. The cave is a metaphor where darkness is gift. She asks to reflect on our own darkness experiences and what we learn as we rest in the cave.
There were lost loves in my early years. Boys breaking my heart. The tears. Imagining my life without that “true love”. I did live without each of them. I don’t think of those times as dark. Just the usual teenage angst when first experiencing romantic love.
My father’s sudden death in my early thirties wrenched me from the assumption that life was safe and secure moving me to know fully life is desperately vulnerable. Shaken, it took time to know how to navigate without a father who was always proud of me and always a place of quiet comfort. I moved along with help from a counselor and my faith. And, siblings trying to find their way, too. I learned I could get through what I couldn’t imagine getting through. I will survive. I am still loved.
Two miscarriages threw me off my steady path. I wondered if I would get to have more children. I grieved the losses and I grieved the possibilities. I wondered what I would become without growing a family. Creating and forming were my gifts. After some time cradling what was not to be, my heart gave each baby to the arms of an angel and I was able to move back into the light.
The stillness continues to astound me after the children have left to find their own way. It feels as if the light has been turned off in the house. I am feeling my way around the corners and the furniture. Going up and down the stairs with each day finding my grip on the railing being looser. Getting more of a sense of where it is that I live.
The metaphor of the dark sky with stars pushing their way through the unseen cloud cover helps. I am stronger than I have ever been. Not as afraid to realize what I don’t need anymore. The parts that don’t serve the world or me as they once had. I am more able to feel. Not doing and more being.
My mother would ask to me “why don’t you just sit down.” I wish I had. Especially with her.
Now I have settled in, resting in the dark, as the stars chat away and occasionally seeing one shoot across the sky. I am getting to know more of who I have been, who I am now and who I am meeting. Myself.
