Dark Shadows

I have been feeling guilty about not writing but haven't been able to nail down exactly what I wanted to write about.  I know there are some things I feel God wants me to share but I am just not ready yet, so those will have to wait for another day.  Based on the title, you may think this is going to be about either the gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows, that swept up young viewers from 1966-1971 or the new movie based loosely off the aforementioned soap opera, starring the one and only Johnny Depp.  As much as I would love to take this article to the realm of entertainment that either of those topics would provide, alas it is not.  Though, much a of my life this year has felt a little bit like a soap opera, there unfortunately aren't any vampires, werewolves, witches, or bad actresses/actors hidden in my closets; not that I know of anyway!

On a more serious note, this will be about my struggle to deal with the dark shadows of my marriage and be able to completely put them away for good.  On Sunday, as we drove up to visit Wes' parents, we were listening to a program on NPR.  They were interviewing a gentleman who served our country in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He talked about some of the things he experienced and what it was like to know people who didn't make it home.  He mentioned how his therapist had told him that those experiences and bad memories are like a shadow.  Your shadow is always there.  Some days your shadow is more noticeable than others.  But just because your shadow is there, doesn't mean you need to go looking for it or stare at it. 

This really hit me.  I know my shadows are always there, they are with me everywhere I go.  But I have the power and the choice to live my life aware of them but not let them steal my attention.  The tricky thing about shadows is that they are deceiving.  In theory it should be a representation of the real thing, but often times our shadows are bigger or smaller or a different shape than the reality.  I have learned that I cannot waste time staring at them trying to find the reality.  Doing so would entangle me in a web of pain and lies that would only feed into the doubt and insecurities the enemy wants me to feel. 

It's hard to move on from things sometimes, but if we can find ways to ignore the shadows and keep taking one step forward at a time, we will discover that those shadows, though never gone from us, will just become part of who we are, a reflection of part of us but not our whole reality.