What can we see in the dark?

What Can We See in the Dark?

I’ve never liked the dark, as a child I was scared of the dark ,and as an adult, I still like to see the light.

The past year there have been some pretty foggy moments, and something I have become particularly familiar with has been the feeling of waiting - the lingering.

There is a particular kind of waiting that comes with a diagnosis - The blood tests, scan results, and the quiet spaces between appointments. It is a waiting that asks questions no one can answer yet. Am I still in remission? Has anything changed? What if…?

I’ve noticed how quickly my mind wants to fill the darkness with certainty. I imagine every possible outcome, hoping that somehow knowledge might soften the uncertainty. But beneath that search is something much older: the desire to control what cannot be controlled.

Perhaps anxiety is, in many ways, our attempt to switch on the lights in the dark.

Recently I’ve been sitting with a question:

What can we actually see in the dark?

At first, almost nothing.

When we step into a dark room, our instinct is to panic or immediately search for light. Yet something remarkable happens if we stay still long enough. Our eyes begin to adapt. Gradually, shapes emerge. Edges become visible. We never see everything, but we begin to see enough.

Maybe uncertainty is like that.

Perhaps we don’t need the whole path .Perhaps we simply need enough light for the next step.

Pema Chödrön writes that great suffering can take us in two very different directions. It can harden us into bitterness and resentment, or, if we lean another way, it can cultivate profound compassion.

I’ve been thinking about that a great deal.

None of us chooses suffering. None of us would willingly invite fear or illness or the discomfort of uncertainty. But perhaps we are given a choice about what those experiences foster within us.

Will fear make my world smaller?

Or will it make my heart larger?

Leukaemia has left me with something I never expected: an ongoing conversation with uncertainty. Even in remission, there is the temptation to interpret every ache as a warning and every symptom as evidence that something is wrong.

Peace has never arrived because I finally knew what tomorrow held. Peace will only arrive when I accept that I don’t.

What I am learning is that courage isn’t the absence of fear. It is the willingness to acknowledge uncertainty quietly sits beside us.

Perhaps that’s what faith looks like too.

Not pretending the darkness isn’t there, but trusting that the light we need will come as our eyes adjust.

Today, I don’t know what my next blood test will show.

But I do know this.

I can choose curiosity over catastrophe and compassion over bitterness, because another beautiful part of my journey in the dark has been my companions that accompany me. There is a great solidarity In journeying with others who understand the the bumps and potholes in the road but also enjoy the resting places along way to exchange stories.

And maybe with that I will finish with words from Isaiah:

"I will give you treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel who calls you by name."

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