Trading Dark for Dawn

You know those late night phone calls? The ones that happen at two or three in the morning and you roll over groaning because you know it cannot be good? I get those a lot. The home phone, the phone that we are all lazy in the household and merely look at it waiting for mom or dad to answer it, has only done that a total of five times that I can consciously remember. My cell phone? Well, it has done a little more than that, but still, the times can be counted under about thirty. So, when I say that I get those phone calls a lot, what phone am I talking about? My heart actually.

The phone that never seems to stop ringing. There are just those nights that no matter how many times I roll around and mess up my once military perfect covers, I just can't sleep. The ringing becomes so annoying that laying there is not doing much good. So, you guessed it, I find a blanket and start roaming the halls. My fingers grasp all the night-lights that like to keep the house lit up like a helicopter pad. For the next hour, those night-lights are going to be unplugged from their source of electricity so that I can peacefully navigate my way through darkened halls, stairways and places where seeing your hand in front of you is just not possible.

I like a dark house. I like to stay up late into the night and sleep through the daylight. The darker my surroundings are, the more cloaked and mysterious life seems to be. There is just something about the darkness that fascinates me. Perhaps it's the fact that walking in such blackness forces one to rely on the confidence of footsteps. Or maybe it's the fact that tiny little flaws cannot be noticed to bug you or cause you to veer off course. What about that feeling that there could be someone around the corner that you will not be able to see until it is too late. How about the silence that penetrates everything around you and magnifies every barely noticeable sound? Maybe I will never know why the darkness fascinates me. . . maybe I will never see the light. . . maybe, just maybe I am too afraid to let go of the darkness.

As much as we may like to think otherwise, we live in a dark world. How often do we, us humans, grab a blanket and wonder around the halls at night? How often do we place a trust that cannot be seen or built on the unknown places shrouded by darkness? You remember those night-lights I unplug at night? When I am done wondering, they are still lying on the ground. Only because I have seen and memorized all those places do I know were exactly to place my fingers to grasp the light again and put it back in its source.

There will be times in this life where the darkness seems more appealing. There will be times in our lives where the world calls our heart, within the darkness that already surrounds us, annoys us so much that we dare to climb off the safe path and traverse the walkways unlit. Our hearts' fingers will grasp those lights that remain in our soul and unplug them from the source. It happens. It happens when we chose to go our own way. And in our own way, the darkness leads us astray. Pretty soon, your memory will fail. Your fingers will not find the source. You will be standing there holding a unplugged night-light in your hand. And you, yes you, will not know what's around that corner and will not trust anything but your feet and will not see the hideous flaws as you pass them by.

But, it does not have to end in such a frightening fashion. There is and always has been a dawn waiting to rise and light up your path, but you have to wait for it. There have been so many times in my life when I think I know best. I do not chose to wait out the ringing or to hang up on the caller as quickly as I can. My dreams lie right and front of me. And though God closes doors, I feel that I have the power to open them. Unknowingly to me, I am not opening the doors nearly as much as I breaking through the door. It has taken me so many runs in the darkness of the night for me to realize that maybe I do not know best; maybe dawn is better than blackness; maybe, just maybe, God actually knows what He is doing when He shuts those doors.

My dreams are big, but God is bigger. My hopes are broad, but God is broader. My desires sparkle, but God sparkles more. Before you answer those late night phone calls when you feel that your dreams are falling apart, before you traverse the halls unplugging your very soul from His light, before you get lost and forget about the hope of dawn, let your heart rest assured that if God takes away your dreams, it is likely because your's were too small in comparison to His. Perhaps God knows a dream that would replace thousands of your's. The question is. . . do you have the patience to wait for it?