I came to a disappointing and frustrating realization this week about the direction that my career needs to go. I have been searching for alternatives to this direction, praying for other doors to open, looking for ways around or over this career path, and I had to conclude that this was a path I had to follow straight through. It will require me to gain a certification and work my way up and through an interim position so that I can then work for the role I would really like to have. I don't want to have to do this, but I have spent the last year trying to avoid it, and I feel that now I should face this "dark tunnel" and work my way through it.

I had been able to dodge this one for a while, but I have many friends who have not had that luxury. Illness came without warning, careers and industries suddenly crashed, people they had counted on betrayed or abandoned them. It was as if they were in the sunshine one minute, and deep in the darkness the next. For some of them, the darkness is so great they cannot tell which direction leads out. Their finances, their health, their relationships, or their sense of worth have become sources of darkness and fear. In contrast to their dark tunnels, my career challenge resembles a cloud drifting in front of the sun.

The important issue is not how we come to experience darkness, but how we respond to the darkness. I've shown that I can find imaginative ways to run away from the darkness, delaying having to confront it. Another of my favorites is to try to see through the darkness, as if my intellect and strength of will can deny the darkness of it's "dark". I have friends who have accepted their darkness as what is "normal" for their lives. I have other friends who are so fixated on the darkness that they are overcome with fear and unable to think of anything else.

There is only one practical solution to physical darkness, and that is to turn on a light—so I carry a flashlight on my key ring just in case. For our metaphoric darkness, we don't have such handy pocket solutions. Some of life's metaphorically darkest moments are far more overwhelming than the deepest black of any cavern or moonless night. There are no switches to chase away anguish, loss, and despair.

But we do have the Light. When Paul wrote to the Colossian church, he used the metaphor of darkness to represent sin and separation from God, and light to represent the new life that salvation through Jesus begins in us. It is this same Jesus and new life that brings light into the darkness we experience with illness, disappointment, fear, and loss. Sometimes, it is enough for God to remind us to stop looking at the darkness in frustration and anger and instead look toward the light of what God can do in our situation. When the despair and hurt is so great, we can find that we feel God's presence with us in stronger ways. Several of the psalms describe a glorious metaphor of God stepping down from heaven's throne to come sit beside us. Jesus is satisfied to sit with His arm around us in the darkness until we have healed enough to move on.

To twist the metaphor again, God has prepared the Light for us. Paul describes it as an inheritance from our Heavenly Father, a portion of the Kingdom of God that we are not worthy to receive except by Grace. The metaphor of light falls far short of what God has planned for each of us and what God is already offering us. It is an unearthly joy, the refreshing living water, and the piece of heaven firmly planted in our hearts. Sometimes when life is difficult and painful, we can find ourselves so overwhelmed by what is outside of us that we lose focus on what is inside us, but God never loses focus on us. May we take great comfort that in life's darkest tunnels, we will always have the Light.