Even in the dark...

I used to stare out into the dark of the night. Watching for what? Nothing...but everything. I truly believed if I didn't look away... I was protecting my family from something. Each evening, when darkness came and the day ended, I was scared—so full of anxiety I could not breathe. So many hours I spent at those dark windows...feeling assured that was the only way to be brave, and I was the only thing left to protect my babies.

Some nights that same fear comes and shows its ugly head—beckoning me to stay a while. Begging me to hate the dark for fear I cannot see what is hiding in its blackness.

Only a few things have changed. I am brave in a different way. I know now what I didn't then—I am nothing. It is not my strength that will get me through...it is His. It is not my power that will protect my babies—it is grace.

With that truth I can look back to that broken girl staring out the window and tell her all the miracles she was missing—thinking she would have to save herself—and help her remember the light that was too hard to see. She was never alone.

It isn't the dark that holds us back...it is our failure to remember the light that has been with us all along.

Every night turns to day. Sometimes those nights are long—and an extra dark fog covers the light of the stars...but eventually the light will win...because it is never lost. Hold on. Don't quit. Never stop fighting. Being brave is realizing how powerless we are—and fighting anyway...

Don't be mad at the darkness—it is what makes the light so bright. Miracles happen even in the dark...they are just harder to see.