The Dark Night Of The Soul

The dark night of the soul has been a constant companion the last half of the semester. Something doesn’t feel right. It has been a long absence since I wrote last. I either didn’t have the words or I didn’t think I had the words. The latter probably holding more weight. The dark night of the soul does not refer to an isolated night, but rather a long period of time and more precisely a heart condition.

Very rarely did I feel Him come upon me, and was I filled with enormous joy, or have I been furiously lodged in His Words. O the Grace of God, to walk with me, to hold my hand and lead me through this dark night. “Your grace and mercy surely will follow me all the days of my life.” The sin has been nearly unprecedented. It is true that I am weak! I want to yell it from the roof tops! I am weak! The God of the Universe is not moved, shaken, or taken back by my weakness. It is I who will make that choice. It is not an easy choice. In fact it is not something that will come naturally; you must learn it. Learn to trust His heart. When you do, sin has no power over you! No longer will it bury you in guilt and condemnation, but rather your sin has the ability to catapult you into the arms of an everlasting love that accepts “you just as you are and not as you should be.” There used to be a yoke of sin and guilt forcing me to run from God. That is Satan’s awful twist on life as we know it here. But now my soul has been captured and my heart melted by the Creator of everything.

He is showing me a better way; the way of grace and love. Do I sin? You bet I do. Am I proud of my sin? Not at all. Am I actively working to remove it from my life? You bet I am! However my Teacher for eternal life is walking beside me showing me the way through transformation, through heart renovation. The cycle now is: sin and grace, which sends me running back into the loving arms of my Father. “What Satan meant for harm God has turned for good.” So does God use sin? Yes He does! He is not hindered by it; there is nothing that will stop Him from reaching His children. Our Master is determined to get His hands dirty and walk right into our lives and begin building a place to stay. His intentions are to live in you living through you. So I praise God in all things, even my dark night of the soul, for in the words of Julian of Norwich, “[it] has brought me to this sacred intimacy with Him.”