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Seeing in the Dark

Brenda’s Blog – July 31, 2018

“Who turned off the lights?”

My friend the urbanite moved to the Piney Woods of East Texas. With little orientation, she stepped out on to her porch the first night. IT IS DARK IN EAST TEXAS! She said her immediate response was, “Who turned out the lights?” No neon, no digital billboards, not even flashing stop lights – just stars. What? Just stars and many, many of them… more than she had ever seen in her life. She had no idea what the heavens held.

No, she didn’t immediately fall in love with the woods. No, she didn’t jettison her yearning for city life. But she did begin appreciating what you can see when the lights are turned off.

My next door neighbor moved from the Dallas metroplex to our woods. She, like my other friend, had never lived outside miles of artificial lighting. She also did not know the frequency of power outages in our rural area. The first big storm taught her a valuable lesson. During the night she headed to the bathroom, flipped on the light, but saw nothing. She made her way to the sink and tried to look in the mirror – but saw nothing. She was in total darkness.

“Dick, Dick, I have gone blind.” Her bleary husband woke up to her frantic cries. He got up with the flashlight, tried other lights and diagnosed the situation: power outage. Once he calmed her down, convinced her she was indeed among the sighted, and overcame her “we are moving back to where the power doesn’t go out!” she learned to love the dark nights.

Each of us has times when we feel like the lights were turned out on a dream, or a goal. Maybe we need to stop and appreciate the stars in the new situation. Perhaps we need someone to shine a flashlight and show us it may not be what we originally assumed.

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