Frost dusted my bedroom windows and slender icicles shivered beneath the trees. The cold seemed symbolic of the state of my soul. It was January, and I was reeling from the heaviness of the year prior; several people close to me were battling severe depression. I almost lost someone I loved dearly. I became fearful of losing those close to me as my sense of personal safety shattered.
Without realizing it, I had developed religious scrupulosity, a form of OCD. I began saying my rosaries obsessively; if I feared I had said a decade improperly, I started it over and re-recited it. Insidiously, God had gone from a loving Father to an impersonal ruler who might strike down someone I loved if I forgot to name them specifically in prayer that day. I could feel Him gently revealing this truth to me, showing me the distortion my prayer life had become.
I looked out at the snow and wept.
"God, You've always been my safe place. Suddenly prayer feels unsafe. How do I trust You again? Please, heal me from this."
In today's first reading from the book of Isaiah, a powerful truth of freedom is proclaimed. "I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness."
As I spoke those words in prayer on that cold winter's day, God immediately began healing me as I emerged from a dungeon of fear. I was able to reclaim my identity as a beloved daughter of God, someone who is safe and protected in the fortress He provides. As we walk through some of the darkest, coldest days of the year, God quietly beckons to us, Let me be your light. The darkness can feel overwhelming and all-consuming at times, yet God waits with a powerful light that illuminates even our very darkest places.
Where in our lives have we turned cold, longing for the warmth of His love? He aches to be let into those places in our soul. We only need to open up to Him and say, "Okay, yes, Lord. Here's my darkness. I know you're not afraid of it- and I don't have to be either."
Let Him be your light.
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