One of my two-and-a-half-year-old’s favorite things to do is push his toy vehicles all around our house, backyard, and driveway. (This activity is all fun and games, by the way, until he rams a Tonka truck into your ankle bone or big toe!) A few days ago, he and his dump truck found their way to my bathroom where I was gathering dirty towels to wash. He looked at the nearby closet and slowly pushed his truck toward it. Then he stopped.

“Uh-fwaid,” he whispered.

I stopped what I was doing and walked over. “You’re afraid of the dark?”

“Light on?” he asked.

“The light will turn on automatically,” I said, as though he had any idea what the word “automatically” meant. “You just have to walk in and it will come on.”[1]

“Light on,” he repeated, this time more demandingly than interrogatively.

“Watch Mommy.”

I stepped into the closet and instantly, the dark room brightened. An appreciative smile on his face, Isaiah pushed his dump truck into the closet, took a quick look around, then, unimpressed by the sight of hampers and hanging clothes, darted out and took off down the hallway.

As I listened to him making gleeful vroom vroom sounds, and the dogs responding with their annoyed yet unthreatening grrrrr sounds, I considered how many times in life we’re presented with a dark room and an accompanying wave of fear. We want desperately to see the room illuminated before we step into it. We want to have a full, clear view of every window, shelf, light fixture, and piece of furniture. We want to know who’s in there, and who’s missing. We want to know where the fire escape is so we can exit speedily, should we feel the need.

But life is rarely so courteous as to show us the dark places before we head into them. I’m sure that you, like me, could never hope to count the number of times you’ve experienced unforeseen grief, disappointment, failure and pain… But in retrospect, do you wish you’d known those blows were coming before they struck you?

One such “dark room” I encountered was when my dad died unexpectedly back in 2009. I wouldn’t have wanted to know it was going to occur beforehand, because that foreknowledge would’ve tainted each of my days with him. Every time I saw him, I would have been silently calculating how many days we had left, planning our last outing and trip and meal together, and praying ceaselessly that his fate would be rewritten. As it was, I had no time to plan because I didn’t think for one second that he would die at 56, especially when his parents had both passed away in their mid-80s (him mom died four years after him). Instead, I stepped into the darkness of that time and trusted the Lord to guide me through it, and he more than proved Himself a good and gentle Shepherd.

I could go on and on about my own shaky steps into stormy seasons and how the Lord’s light led me through each one of them. What about you, though? Is there anything you’re facing now while wishing a light would switch on and show you all you need to make it through victoriously?

Be it a relationship, an illness, a job, or a death, I pray you’ll walk into the darkness without fear or doubt, but rather trust that just enough light will filter in when you need it. And one day, maybe months or even years down the road, you’ll reflect on the trial and see clearly how it was for your benefit that you weren’t given all the steps at once or all the solutions right away.

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.