What Can You Do In The Dark?
Simple ways we survive & serve when the world grows darker
One late night long ago, I realized I had learned to change a diaper in the dark.
What had once been an “all lights on, all hands on deck” operation was now muscle memory. I had been diapering babies in the wee hours of the night for so long that I no longer needed light. My hands knew the motions. My eyes could see enough.
Years of nursing and rocking and lullabying transformed my younger fears of night’s lonely, anxious hours. Nighttime parenting became like prayer: a practice to learn in humility and sacrifice and love. A well-worn path down the hallway to the one crying out in need.
What can you do in the dark?
Feed a baby. Comfort a child. Say a prayer. Change a diaper.
Tend the sick. Make love. Care for a pet. Walk where you know best.
When the world grows darker, we have to remember what we know how to do in the dark.
The thousand ordinary actions of loving and serving and caring. In the body, for the soul, with others. Our acts of daily, nightly care for the people and places and creatures and creation we love.
We have to keep offering what we can, and we have to help others keep doing their own ordinary living. Even thousands of miles away. Even though we may never meet.
When I get overwhelmed (which is often; which is every time I check the news right now), I start with what I know how to do in the dark.
Care for myself. Whisper a prayer. Take a deep breath. Drink a glass of water.
Care for others. Hug my kids. Kiss my spouse. Text a friend.
Care for strangers. Listen and learn. Pray and give. Remember the Gospel call to serve.
Jesus spoke about light and darkness so often that our tired ears tune out when we assume we know the story. But take one look around our world—Afghanistan, Haiti, Covid’s continuing ravages—and you realize why he kept repeating what we needed to hear, age after age.
Life will never be easy. This strongest light will keep you going when the rest go dim.
When I asked my husband one night what he knew how to do in the dark, he thought for a few minutes and then said, “I’ve prayed more in the dark than in the light.”
I turned his words and wisdom over and over in my head. Not just his faithfulness in returning to God in the night, but the deeply human truth that we tend to turn to prayer when life is dark and difficult, not light and easy.
Most of my prayers have been uttered in darkness, too. The holiness of having nothing left but God alone. The hope of trying to trust that darkness can bring hidden growth and risen life.
That long-ago night when I learned I could care for a baby without turning on the light, I was surprised in the darkness. He was my second child, and he taught me how to trust myself.
What do you know how to do in the dark? How does it help you know the Light?
To Know the Dark
by Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Peace,
Laura
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Find my books here: Everyday Sacrament | Grieving Together | Prayers for Pregnancy & Birth | To Bless Our Callings | Living Your Discipleship