This week I heard someone speak of a deep disappointment, a hurt, a broken place in his heart and how very deep that place had become. You see deep places can come in an instant but they also can come as we free-fall plunge ever deeper into the darkness—The Dark Night of the Soul. It is as St John of the Cross (1542-1591) observed, it is the soul journeys deeper into the excruciating dark night that there can be hope—a hope for escape. Such escape is in the divine union with the love of God.
It was in that broken place that something wonderful happened. It was there that God met him—not in some emotionally charged event, but quietly and deeply—in the deep places of his heart, God was there but then God was there before he arrived in his darkness and was there long after he left and before the next soul would descend into that depth of that darkness.
If you think about it, in each of our lives there are deep emotional hurts, places that are not just bruises, scrapes, or cuts but deep hurts that plunge into the very deepest places of our hearts and lives. They plunge as a knife into the very center, the secret interior places of our lives, carving its way through our beliefs, suppositions, and confidences.
It is not that such a knife cuts deeply and alone but with it comes ever more darkness into the mounting darkness. It creates a hurt beyond words to describe or feeling to cry.
Left unacknowledged and unchallenged these darkened hurts grow ever deeper. Soon they are so deep into our hearts and lives that it is impossible for us to make our way out. It is as though we are in the darkness of midnight seeking our way out of a maze of feelings and confusion.
To compound our hurt, for whatever reason they can go unacknowledged and thus avoided by ourselves and unrecognized by those closest to us. They grow ever deeper—our hearts grow ever darker.
Perhaps you can understand not from some distant place but from the journey within your own heart and life. Perhaps you can understand that in the darkest of emotional nights, it is hard to believe that there can be light, much less that you will ever see the light. Perhaps you can understand that it is in the dark night of the soul that lonesomeness and loneliness permeate and saturates and that with a snarling vengeance—the vengeance of a predictor upon a wounded sufferer.
Also know that the emotional crevices of our lives no matter how deep and how dark are, as noted, actually places where the Lord is seeking to be there. No matter how deep the hurt, God’s love is ever deeper.
Why is that love in the dark places? It is and was there all along. It is like an unseen friend, nearby but unseen. It is now seen because it is in those places life as we know it is stripped away. We then can face the harsh reality of our situation(s) and face the questions of “Without all the trappings, who am I?” and “What am I?”
However, if we will stop for a moment and in that moment savor the taste of being stripped of ourselves there is something else we can find. That something else is a sweet new reality—the sense of the reality of otherness. It is in that otherness that we sense the presence of God. It is then that there is a new opportunity for life, maybe not as it was before but life. From the darkness of what was alive now comes new life—life in Christ.
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