“Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. If I insist on being pessimistic, there is always tomorrow. Today I am blessed.”
— Maya Angelou
Sounds like good advice to me. Earlier today I was talking with my therapist who asked me how I was this week. When I replied that I was doing pretty well, she asked me what was the difference between today and how I’d been the previous week. (Regular readers of this blog will know that last week–in fact the last couple of weeks–had been emotionally challenging for me.) I pondered her question for a few moments. What had been different about the week just past? I’m not sure I could give her a very clear answer except to say that I made it through and came out on the other side. “You survived?” She asked me, and I acknowledged that hade perhaps been part of it. But it goes beyond mere survival. Even now I am not finding it easy to articulate this.
What I said to her is this: that I had experienced one of those long “dark nights of the soul” and made it through to the next morning. I was able to greet the morning with a renewed sense of hope and faith that everything is going to work out. Virtually nothing had changed in my circumstances save my approach to them. This is not a secret nor a magical bit of deep wisdom. It is simply an acknowledgment that there is very little in life over which we have control, but we can control how we respond to life. There was at least one night last week when I was anxious about all the challenges pressing in on me that at one point all I could do was rock back and forth on my bed in my mind saying, “Lord, lord, lord, lord.” I was restless, dispirited, angst-filled, so many unsettled emotions roiling inside of me. I didn’t try to fight them or push them away, I just rocked a little while. Eventually I distracted myself by playing an innocuous game on my phone until I got sleepy (around 1 a.m.) and settled myself down enough to sleep. The next morning, all the fears and agitation I’d experienced the night before had evaporated like early morning mists. The compassions of God are new every morning.
I am grateful for “surviving” those dark nights of the soul. They are not new to me and in that sense I know that I can weather them and remain whole. Like anyone else I would like to have an easier life than what I am experiencing now. But I have the experience and know that these nights of intense worry, loneliness, sadness, grief, despair do pass. In the poem ” The Invitation” Oriah Mountain Dreamer puts it this way,
“It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.”Those of us who know the dark nights know how to get up after a night of grief and despair and do what needs to be done. So what was different from last week to this week? I’m not entirely sure but I know that I am learning to be patient with myself, knowing that these moments are going to come, but they don’t last. I really am learning how to be with whatever comes up in the moment and not spend a whole lot of time and energy telling myself stories about why things are the way they are and how they’re “never” going to get better. I have my nights of grief and despair, my occasional “blue” moods, my moments of panic; but they are just that, moments. And if I am patient they pass. I am grateful for this knowledge and for the ability to outlast the emotional storms. Gratitude is part of the formula for safely and successfully navigating through challenging times, and while I look forward to easier days ahead, I can be just fine living in the day that’s right in front of me.
