- alcoholism
- drug addiction
- anxiety
- depression
- sex addiction
- domestic violence
- physical or verbal abuse
- dysfunctional family patterns
- infidelity
- things that everyone else sees
With that list of issues, we’d all choose to stay in the dark room of denial, avoidance, lack of awareness, and cluelessness.
Many years ago I worked with a woman whose boyfriend was an intravenous heroin addict. She said ” I had no idea he used heroin.. He wore long sleeves a lot but I didn’t think much of it..Come to think of it, whenever he was around, I was always short on money… I just thought I’d spent it on something…Now that I’m talking about it, there’s a pair of earrings, I’ve never found. You don’t think he took them do you? ” DARKNESS
How about this one. “I love my wife with all my heart, but she’s been acting strange lately. She’s always on the phone. When I ask who she is talking to, she says a friend. If I walk into the office and see her writing an email, she’s quick to close the computer down. Again when I ask her, she says it’s just work. The other day, she didn’t come home until real late like 2 or 3 in the morning. When I asked her where she was she hesitated an said she was with her friend Dawn and must have fallen asleep. She looked awfully dressed up to go out with Dawn by the way. You don’t think she’s cheating on me do you? She wouldn’t do that, would she? DARKNESS
Darkness is pervasive. We don’t want to know what we do not want to know. If I don’t look, I don’t see. If I don’t see, I won’t be upset, or scared, or hurt, or angry. If I’m this in the dark, I don’t have to do anything to change. I can live my dark bliss forever.
Is there a cost to living in the dark? Yes, but if you are in the dark, you don’t recognize the cost. Ironically you only see the cost, when you find the courage to:
take off the dark glasses
open the blinds
open the curtains
open the shades
When the light comes into your dark room, you begin to see what you don’t want to see and begin to ask the questions that you don’t want to ask. At that point, the feelings come in and now it’s time to recognize what you didn’t want to see. The more that you allow the light to come in the more that you can answer the hard questions:
Why did I not see this?
Why did I put myself in this place?
What am I going to do?
Can this situation be changed?
Will I be OK?
Will I ever be the same?
Asking the questions turns on the lights, and begins your healing, and your changing. The more you ask, the more you see, the more you heal. This process will take time and patience. You don’t have to do it in one hour, or one day, or one week, or one month, or even in one year. You owe it to yourself to find the courage to turn on the lights.
Change is possible.
