Even the Darkness ...

Last night I couldn't sleep.  Might have been because my sweet Husband is off camping for his Northwest Ecology summer class, and we haven't been apart for this long in over 3 years (with not even the ability to call each other either!)  Might have been all the things on my mind.  Might have been because I felt like the world of chronic health issues is difficult to navigate, the various treatments for confirmed disgnosis, the various opinions on testing to see what ties it all together, the insurance issues, the cost of more testing ... Finally at about 3 am I opened up Psalms and read this:

Psalm 139


For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

1 You have searched me, LORD,

and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue

you, LORD, know it completely.

5 You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.



7 Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;


the night will shine like the day,


for darkness is as light to you.



13 For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you.


The words in red especially stood out to me.  I feel sometimes that chronic illness and pain is a deep darkness.  People all have opinions and judgements about other people's pain, doctors are often confused when diagnosis eludes them.  Pain can be very isolating.  Pain sometimes feels like night time that never ends and you can't fall to sleep.  No one sees what it feels like, no one sees the frustration with tests after tests ... It feels like stumbling around in the darkness trying to find a treatment that works and it feels so alone.   BUT GOD SEES.  He isn't limited by darkness like we are.  What a comfort.

After I read this I laid down with the Bible next to me (where my husband usually sleeps) and fell fast asleep.  :)