Darkness sometimes can hit without warning.  No call, no siren of impending danger, it slithers up and strikes the psyche while infecting your being with it’s lethal venom.  

While there are varying forms of darkness, it visited me yesterday.  It slid up next to me whispering nasty everything’s into my mind. It had more of a revealing quality, yesterday – one of those flavors of darkness that presented it’s side of the truth in it’s twisted and emotionally heavy way, forcing me to stare directly into it’s big, black, darkened eyes. It beckoned me with intensity to confront it.  

And so I did.  We sat on my bed with the lights of the day snuffed out by the hiding of the sun, and took turns tossing the information presented – wrestling, dancing, chiding, and humiliating.  It cast accusations at me while I held up my shields of flimsy defense. It rammed facts down my throat while I pleaded to see the other side of the case, and make way for unknown possibilities.  But it won out by the end of the night. As tears moistened defined lines down my cheek, I expired into sleep.

It sits with me this morning, silent but present, prepared and waiting for the battle to continue.  I am busy calling out to lifelines that offer guidance, peace, perspective. I am quiet in my reserve, aware I am not ready to face it again, but it does not escape me that I soon will be back within its grip.

I sit here.  Silent. Holding breath while I wait for it to make its first move.  Unprepared, untrained, I wait and hope beyond hope that goodness is on my side. Doubt and fear clasp my heart as they heavily swing back and forth from it, laughing.  I anticipate this battle will undo me.  It has the potential to strip me. It has the potential to wipe me, sending me into a spiral of uncertainty. And yet?

And yet…

It must be fought.  Authenticity must prevail.  Darkness grips tight the secret.  Darkness guards with brute force, the hidden. But the truth is there.  The Truth – strong, but gentle and soft with the purity of a child – is shielded underneath it’s shadow.  And I am nothing if I do not make every attempt for it to emerge. Even at my own expense, I call to the truth.  I bind myself in loyalty to it, regardless of my consequences. I want it to win. And I will make my move, and pave the path for it’s ethereal beauty to have nothing but the widest lane out.

I reach deep inside.  The blue pyramid of grace within my grasp.  And I begin to fight. Goodness. Mercy. Authenticity.  Grace. Love. My stabilizers and my only hope. Ready to endure the potentially long battle where Truth is brought to the stage.  Where Darkness cowers and flees.  And in the aftermath of it all, exposure gives way to still rest.

Truth, I hear you.  Despite my own errors, I hear you.  The faintest whisper. The beautiful call.  And I will make every attempt to attune to your song to pull me through to you, or to pull you through to me.  I hold fast to you, ready to die whatever deserved deaths are in my fate. You’re there. You’re here. You’re all and in all.  And you will uphold me. I choose you.

And after the battle, as we stand towards the calamity with with your hand held fast in mine, we will turn to look upon one another in committed solidarity, and move onward.  “Onward and upward” you say with strength and poise. 

“Onward and Upward.”