Almost every day, Titus will come find me and ask if we can “cuddle in the dark.” He likes to sit in my lap in the chair in the quiet area of my room after dark. It’s kind of interesting, considering the kid hates the dark. I constantly go around the house turning off all the lights he just HAS to turn on. He won’t go to the bathroom by himself if the light is off even though he is perfectly capable of reaching the light switch by himself (though I have learned that if I make myself scarce and he REALLY needs to go, he somehow stirs up enough courage to do it himself!).

Why are we afraid of the dark? For children it is dark rooms or shadows on their walls at bedtime. But for adults, it’s another kind of darkness that terrifies us. We are afraid of pain—physical and emotional. We are afraid of grief and loss. We are afraid of struggle. We avoid them at all cost. I surely do.

In the past five years, several of my biggest fears have been realized. One of my children died. A relationship I thought would last forever ended. Someone I love dearly all but disappeared from my life. At some points, the darkness felt like too much, but God always reached into those darkest moments and His light would dissipate it. Sometimes it was a word He would give me. Sometimes a song. Sometimes a person. Sometimes His very presence. But He always came—eventually.

During one of the lowest points of that season, I was in the checkout line at Barnes and Noble when I saw a magnet that read: “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.” I had never heard that saying before and was deeply struck by it. It became my mantra. I started seeing butterflies everywhere, looking for them, wearing them, decorating with them. They represented hope and light and new life that can only come from darkness. I promised myself that my story would end that way too.

But still I dread the dark days, the struggle, the pain, the grief. Even though I know that I know that I know that He is working on me within them and that they will be followed by growth and goodness, how do I live within them? How do I stop fearing them?

Yesterday my Advent devotional led me to a familiar passage in Isaiah 40. It contains the words that John the Baptist proclaimed as he prepared the people for Jesus’s ministry: “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’” (Isaiah 40:1-5, ESV)

This time as I read those familiar words, I saw something I had never seen before—an answer to my struggle to embrace dark days. It’s so simple and obvious. Isaiah tells us exactly what to do in the wilderness and desert days of our lives—“prepare the way of the Lord” and “make a highway for our God.” I just need to make a space for Him. That means that all I really need to do in my darkest days is seek Him—cry out to Him, sing to Him, praise Him, say His name, read His word, think about Him. Once He has the space—the highway He needs to reach me—then He will do the rest. He will lift the valleys and lower the mountains and level the ground and smooth the rough places. His glory will be revealed, and I will see His hand.

We once had a chrysalis in a butterfly habitat that just would not open. The kids didn’t want to throw it away “just in case,” so it eventually made its way into our dark, damp basement. Saylor was the youngest child at the time and a fervent prayer warrior. Even with the habitat out of sight, every morning in our “morning meeting,” she prayed for that “chrysalis to become a beautiful butterfly.” Many months later, I was utterly shocked to go into our basement one day to find a small, but very much alive, butterfly fluttering around that habitat.

Out of the very longest and darkest darkness we can imagine, He can—and does—bring life.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” (Isaiah 9:2, ESV)

(Butterfly created by Maya Barnes.)