Living a life for the name of and person of Jesus Christ

Since October of 2008, I’ve been in a period called the Dark Night of the Soul.  Some people are familiar with this phrase and others aren’t.  I had never heard of this term until a couple of years ago when a friend in my women’s group shared her own experience going through the Dark Night.  The Dark Night of the Soul is used to describe a phase in a person’s spiritual life marked with a sense of loneliness and desolation.  It was originally a poem written by a Monk in the 16th Century, Saint John of the Cross.  In the season of the Dark Night, a follower of Christ looses their experiential value in prayer or consistent devotion to God.  Prayer becomes difficult and unrewarding.  A heavy presence of doubt covers the person as well as the feeling of abandonment and confusion before God.  It’s important to note that not everyone goes through this season.

When I first entered this journey through the Dark Night of the Soul I didn’t want to believe it.  Even when my friend shared her own experience I related in so many deep ways but I didn’t want to believe that God would take me through this process…I didn’t want to believe that He would allow me to feel the sense of abandonment, loneliness, doubt or emptiness.  Coming from a very hard life that I lived, there was no way that my God…who I looked to for everything would allow this journey to flow into my life.  Living in Christ and for Christ in my early years as a believer were amazing.  Everyday I felt pursued, romanced and near to God.  I would go on dates with Him, I would spend morning, afternoon and night in His word – praying and seeking after Him.  Everyday was full of hope, peace, contentment and pure passion for Him.  I wanted to spend every free minute I had with Him…I was in love with my Maker.  

In October of 2008, everything changed.  I didn’t know it at first.  As time went on, as prayers were said, songs were sung, my heart began to feel very distant.  I no longer could sing songs that I sang passionately at church.  I no longer knew how to pray for myself and my prayers felt unheard.  The intimacy I once had with God was nowhere to be found.  I felt very confused and brokenhearted.  I was angry.  I was frustrated.  I was upset.  I was mad.  I remember I would stand in the back at church during response time and would watch people sing from their hearts, life their hands to God.  As I stood in the back of my church, my heart was screaming – it was screaming at God.  Songs that used to fill up my soul with adoration became just words.  My belief in them had diminished.  It wasn’t real to me anymore.  I wondered many times, “Why do I even come to church?  Why do I even pray?  Why do I even try.”

The first part of this season I didn’t want to deal with it.  I kept pushing through it hoping that it would be over soon.  There was no way I was going to be in this forever.  I kept fighting and fighting.  I would fake it through until finally I began to accept this part of my journey with God.  Instead of fighting my way out of it, I began to sit in it and realize that this is where I was at.  It now became a reality in my life – I accepted the reality.  My reality.

As I shared in previous post – during this season my girlfriends were experiencing great joy with entering into romantic relationships with men that wanted to be with them, men that chose them.  And my dating life – well it was no fun.  I went on dates but the moment I thought something could work out, I would get the door slammed in my face.  I didn’t understand God.  I didn’t understand why my prayers for a mate weren’t being answered and my friends prayers for mates were being answered.  I entered into therapy the beginning of the year of 2010.  And although I look back in therapy as a good and healthy thing, I felt God was distant in that as well.  I felt like I was fighting for my own soul alone.  I was alone in my pain.  I was alone in processing everything that I had experienced in my childhood and early twenties.  And the times where I needed God the most to come and sit with me, hold me and whisper promises in my ear – He was nowhere to be found.

As time went on I had heard friends speak of how they have monthly sessions with a Spiritual Director.  I was intrigued and fascinated by the thought of sitting down with someone who could help me navigate through my relationship with God.  I contacted my church to send me a list of Spiritual Directors they had on file and picked a lady who has been doing this for a quite a while.  I met with my Spiritual Director for the first time on Monday after work.  I was anxious and hopeful that our first meeting would help bring clarity and some revelation to everything that I have been going through in the last three years with God.

Well, there was no revelation or shift in change with how I view God.  I can say with confidence that my meeting with my Spiritual Director was perfect, it was perfect to sit with someone and share the deep parts of my relationship with God that I’m having a hard time with.  She asked me if I’m angry with God.  With tears in my eyes, I nodded…yes.  She also asked if I’ve been honest with my prayers before God.  Again, I nodded…yes.  This wasn’t always the case in my whole life, but ever since I entered into the Dark Night, I’ve found myself completely bare, naked and honest before God.  I often wonder what He thinks when I’m screaming and yelling at Him and honestly, sometimes cursing.

At the end of the session she asked me one question, “If you could get one thing out of this journey, what do you want.”  I sat there for a moment, thought about it and said, “Above the desire to get married, have a family one day, my desire out of this journey is to know that He is near and working in my life.  To hear Him again.  To have Him near to my heart again.”  And she ended with this verse in Job 14: 7-9:

For there is hope for a tree,
   if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,
   and that its shoots will not cease.
⁸Though its root grow old in the earth,
   and its stump die in the soil,
⁹yet at the scent of water it will bud
   and put out branches like a young plant.

And after she read that verse she said, “Sometimes all you need is that scent of water to breathe and live again.”  I’m dying for that scent of water to wash over me.  I want to hope again. I want to be excited and in Awe of God again. I want to trust in His ways and believe that He hasn’t forgotten me.  I have no idea when this season will be over.  I have no idea why I have to go through this.  And I’m told that being in the Dark Night is a blessing in disguise.  If it is – I’m ready for the blessing.  I’m ready to be done and yet I understand that sometimes, season’s like this, take time and work.  So, in the meantime…I’m seeking.  I’m not going to stop until He shows up again.