Good morning…
God’s timing is interesting. During this tremendously difficult week, “Dark Emotions” is the name of the chapter we are discussing in Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. Dark emotions. Fear. Despair. Sadness. We don’t like them. In their presence, our natural tendency is to run and hide. Avoid. Deny. Yet Barbara encourages the opposite response. Instead might we lean in and learn?
“In this view, the best thing to do when fear has a neck hold on you is to befriend someone who lives in real and constant fear,” writes Barbara on page 85. “The best thing to do when you are flattened by despair is to spend time in a community where despair is their daily bread. The best thing to do when sadness has your arms twisted behind your back is to sit down with the saddest child you know and say, ‘Tell me about it. I have all day.’ The hardest part about doing any of these things is to do them without insisting that your new teachers make you feel better by acting more cheerful when you are around. After years of being taught that the way to deal with painful emotions is to get rid of them, it can take a lot of reschooling to learn to sit with them instead, finding out from those who feel them what they have learned by sleeping in the wilderness that those who sleep in comfortable homes may never know.”
Fear. Despair. Sadness.
Might we befriend?
Might we spend time?
Might we sit, listen, learn from our dark emotions?
Even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness, I am not overcome by fear. Because You are with me in those dark moments, near with Your protection and guidance, I am comforted (Psalm 23:4, VOICE).
…Sue…
P.S. Larenzia Lawrence, program director of our after-school program at PAWkids, is taking four deserving students on a Homecoming College Tour at Mississippi Valley State University this weekend. $900 will cover the weekend experience for four students, including lodging, travel, meals and a school shirt.
Larenzia explains: “One of the goals of our weekend trips is to expose our students to life altering experiences, with hopes of inspiring them to a better lived life. A percentage of our past students are now in high school and getting to an age where choices are going to mean everything. This weekend, I will have the pleasure of exposing the students to the choice I made to go to college. MVSU is not only my alma mater but a school full of history and love. Our students, in most cases, will need a caring institution like this to ensure their matriculation and success. As agents of socialization to our students, a trip like this is vital to their success. Please help me make this a reality for our families, sowing a seed into the future leaders of tomorrow.”
If you would like to donate toward the $900 weekend experience for these students, please touch on the gratitude gift link on our SueToYou website, indicating “PAWkids College Tour.” I will collect our money and take a check to Larenzia before the end of the school day.
