Dark places. We all have them. For me, they work as that little amber light in my gas gauge, telling me I need to get gas.
Someone just asked me if I ever experience fear and insecurities and I told them I do.
They didn’t believe me.
I mostly understood why.
When I’m in the Word each morning, in prayer, and quite literally walking hand in hand with God’s Word on my phone or iPad, I am secure, joyful, giddy, even. When I am not…
It’s just a crack, a tiny fissure in the glass but when the light hits it, it does not come to my eye. In those moments (and I pause to verify the Lord holds my hand) the window shatters and the pieces coalesce into a macabre, dark, blood tinted, stained glass window of sorts through which I see the past.
Reflected in each shattered piece is a memory of the effect of the enemy in so many of our shared experiences. How can I possibly write a book if I can barely turn this page to share it with you. I see the faint glint of light on the sharp corner of the paper thin shard and dare not to turn it for fear of injury.
Any of you who have come from broken homes and, especially those where drugs and alcohol were used by your parents to numb the effects of the broken edges of their marriages, might also have this constant reminder from the enemy that we were worth less to them than their latest spouse or vise.
The worst of our stepdads was the calculated one, the one about which I can still feel fear creep up inside me when I smell alcohol or the added taint it gives to a person’s perspiration who has drunk the night before. I’m a full grown, 6’2″, 215 pound man whose fear sets my adrenaline in motion the instant I smell that odor. One night, I didn’t know Jaclyn had given my son, Max, a little NyQuil and I plopped down beside him on the couch to play a game and immediately got back up and went to the kitchen to tell her I could smell alcohol. Inside, I was containing the beginnings of a small storm of child-like emotions for security and safety. That’s one of the ways I know I’ve not been in the Word and worship for whatever reason.
It was that dad I write about the most, the one about whom, when my brother shared with me he had seen him and was certain he was now dead, that there was this sudden release of so many little tensions in my muscles that it felt like I had little rubber bands of fear all over me that had suddenly snapped.
In the dark, he was the one who had turned me into what my sister had deemed “The Tin Man’, the one who has no heart. He had told my brother and I that real men did not cry or laugh and, when he caught us, stopped us, held us, and placed his closed fist inches from our faces, looked us in the eyes, and punched us so hard our lips bled. It eventually worked and we learned to suppress our emotions. I had become especially adept at it and it was not until many years later the Lord would release me from that oppression.
He was the one whose version of a ‘timeout’ was to place a cast iron skillet of popcorn seeds in the corner of two walls and have us kneel in them with our faces to the corner until our knees bled.
He was the one who corralled my brother and I into a corner of the yard while on horseback and popped us multiple times with his bullwhip, tearing our clothes, and once, my brother’s skin. Once, I ran beneath the horse’s legs more ready to be trampled than struck again with the whip.
He is the one who, as the three of us, my brother, sister and I rounded the corner from the road that led back to our elementary school and turned onto the road leading to our house, a dilapidated hotel which was the only place we could find in which to live at the time, was standing beside the flames of our burn barrel, using a garden rake to chop to death the kittens we had adopted only a few months before and was throwing them in the fire as we approached.
He was cold, calculated, tall, and athletic. In the dark, he is the one who the enemy says I am the most like and when I look in the mirror I’m reminded of him…
Okay, too much dark for the moment and we have only come to about age 10. I just shared a little of this with one of our pastors and we both observed that many of us have our dark places and macabre upbringings.
In the Light and what I really mean there is in the presence of our very real and amazing God, through Jesus, the dark inspires us to more desperately retain a healthy hold on His hand because of the incredible way in which He seems to make the past only history, only a story to be told, again. “This is my story. This is my song…”, right? Revelation 12:11
In the light, I am a very blessed man, husband, and dad, who solely by the very incredible grace of God, never once did to any of my family any of what was done to my brother, sister, and I.
Max and Emmett feel like to me an affirmation that Jaclyn and I did something right the first time and God wants us to raise up, stir up, and inspire another generation for Him in this season of our lives.
For those of you wondering about the title of this little note, that doesn’t take place until twenty years from what I’ve told you and will be included in a future note. For now, if you know me, even just a little bit, you know our great God has brought me out of the dark, a darkness I am very aware of, and has enveloped me in such a way as I begin every day reading a Proverb, five Psalms, and a daily devotional called “Grace for the Moment” by Max Lucado. I read. I pray. I praise. I worship. I kiss my wife, wrestle with my kids, get dressed, and go to work.
Throughout the day, I’m blessed with challenges that are bigger than me alone and overcome them through prayer, God, and Google.
