Dark
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It was dark.
The kind of dark you can feel, thick and heavy.
Where was I?
What had happened?
How did I get here?
I did not know, but I knew it was dark.
I never did like the dark, as I imagine most don’t. Ever since I was a child, I was scared of the dark. The kind of scared that when the light switch is at the bottom of the basement stairs, you flick it and run as fast as you can up those stairs (and of course the stairs were open in the back so that any hand could come right through and grab you).
I’m not sure why I was so scared of the dark. Nothing bad had ever happened to me in the dark to cause a fear. Maybe it wasn’t the dark so much as what was unknown about the darkness. What is there in the dark? Or, is it the lack of something that makes it so ominous?
Void.
Empty.
Alone.
“Hello?” I said.
There was no answer.
The quiet was almost as bad as the darkness. A deafening silence. No white noise. No electronics humming. Nothing. You never realize just how loud the silence is, until there’s nothing to keep you from hearing it. The sound of my own breathing was the only distraction from my thoughts. Questions, but no answers.
I felt around. Nothing. Just the cold, hard floor under me. I did not want to venture too far from where I was sitting. The fear of the unknown in the darkness kept me still. An endless void of nothing, all around.
No light.
No sound.
Isolation in every way.
My faith would tell me that I’m never alone. That I have a friend that sticks closer than a brother. A God that never leaves or forsakes. But, truth be told, it had often felt like He was far away more than it did He was near. And now didn’t feel any different. If God was there with me in the blinding dark and the deafening silence, I sure couldn’t see or hear Him. He wasn’t making Himself known.
Internally this time, as if praying, “Hello?”
“God, are you there?”
“Jesus?”
“Anyone?”
Still there was nothing. No voices except my own. Just questions with no answers.
Still dark.
Still quiet.
Still alone.
Then…
Suddenly…
This is my first attempt at creative writing in a very, very long time. Just a few thoughts, still incomplete. Please feel free to leave comments, but be kind. Thanks for reading.
Love one another.
