Walking in His Ways: When a Metaphor Fails

 

 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light  Ephesians 5:8

 This is a beautiful passage, and a fitting metaphor, that God gave us through Paul. Similar messages are shared in John 1:4, 8:12, 2 Corinthians 4:6 and lots of other places. God, goodness, righteousness are represented by light and evil and all it’s tricks and fallacies by darkness. This is helpful for us to understand and gives us insight into a deeper truth, but on its surface, I struggle with it at times.

 You see, today I have a migraine, and with migraines, light is my enemy. It causes pain; torture really. When a migraine is really bad, I have to lay in a dark room. Even the little lights from the smoke detector or the outlet next to my bed that has a small blue bulb embedded in it are too much. So far, today, I can handle the outside light coming through the window, but the lights in the house are off and I even had to dim the screen of my computer as I’m writing this. I know in my heart that what Jesus and the authors of the Bible wrote about light is a metaphor, but I can’t help but feel that I’m trapped in that metaphor, trapped in the darkness.

 When you’re in pain, lots of pain, ongoing, chronic pain, it’s so hard to think straight. It’s so hard to make heads or tails of life and what is going on. In my favorite Star Trek series, Discovery, Michael Burnham has a long history with the book Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll, and she uses it to describe how she is experiencing her reality, “It’s how I learned the real world doesn’t always adhere to logic. Sometimes down is up, sometimes up is down. Sometimes when you’re lost, you’re found.” I must admit that often in my life, I feel as though I’m living on the other side of the looking glass so to speak. In this place, light, which is supposed to be good and healing and refreshing, causes hurt and pain. Darkness, which is equated with evil, is comforting and calming. At times I’ve worried in a fever-dream sort of way through this metaphor wondering if I’m stuck in a trap of evil that makes the darkness look good to keep me there. What do you do when the light at the end of the tunnel causes you to squint and pain to stab through your head?

 I’m having one of those mornings where life looks more than a little hopeless. I’m not likely to get better, only worse, at least in this life. I hurt so much more today than I did a year ago, and a year ago I hurt more than the year before that, and so on. My vision is worse. I can’t get around like I used to, like anyone else my age would. I can barely go up and down stairs, on a good day, or bend over to pick something up off the floor. I feel so useless. I keep gas lighting myself saying, “Maybe you’re just exaggerating. Maybe you could move more freely and do these things if you just tried harder.” Then, every once in a while, I believe that gas lighty voice in my head and I try, and boy do I crash hard. It’s like that kid that knows that if he just believes hard enough, he can fly like Peter Pan – and then he jumps off the dresser and crashes to the floor. The difference is, the kid will cry for a minute then get up and run around like nothing happened. Me, I’m stuck in bed or on the couch for weeks.

 This is the darkness I am trapped in. I go to the doctor, and even though she feels like she’s out of ideas for me, we strategize one more option for dealing with the pain or the migraines. I leave confident that this time I have something that might work. But 24 hours later, that meeting is hazy in my mind and I’m not sure exactly what we thought would help or how I was supposed to implement it. I give it my best shot and it doesn’t seem to do anything, anything at all. So then I hold on and wait until next month, until my next appointment, when my poor doctor will hold her head in her hands and say, “I just don’t know,” one more time.

 This morning I sit in the semi-darkness and avoid the light, while reading about the light and how it is good and pleasing and helpful. Today I hear all the voices around me that tell me to eat this and not that, to get out and exercise – which inevitably leads me to injury, to just believe harder and I will be healed. If you can’t tell, I’m probably more than a little depressed.

Here's the Thing: Even in all this, I have hope. I see the light dawning on the horizon and I know that it is good. I know that the true light will not harm me, but help me. It will illuminate the good path, the one that leads to healing once and for all.