We got wind over the holidays that a number of dear friends have have had a rough go of it. One friend said it was like having the lights go out, then living in darkness with no way to turn them back on.
Living in darkness may be the ultimate experience of powerlessness.
I remember when such a darkness hung over me.
It was June of 1985. I felt:
- irredeemably broken
- completely useless
- wholly without light
I was living my final alcoholic nightmare.
“No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs, Of some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap.” ~ James Weldon Johnson
Then at an AA meeting, when I was two days sober, I met a guy named Gary, a carpenter who had nine years of sobriety.
After he shared his story I knew immediately I wanted what he had.
We went for coffee after the meeting and I boldly asked him to work with me.
He said he would. So work we did.
And my, oh my, what a beautiful thing became of it.
Every day for the next six months we went to meetings together. All the while I was intensely working the 12 steps.
Soon, light had returned to my life.
There was nothing particularly special about Gary. He had come from a hardscrabble background, spoke with a stammer and had worked with his hands all his life.
But he did something that changed the course of my life forever: He lent me his light.
It saved my life.
He left me with one request:
PASS IT ON.
Gary did for me what the anonymous ‘savior’ in this story did:
There once was a woman in Delaware traveling from Wilmington to New Castle in the dead of night when, for no apparent reason, the lights in her car went out. Headlights, tail lights, parking lights, everything went dark.
She was driving blind.
Terror overtook her. Her fear of being left stranded on the roadside with her car unable to start kept her from pulling over to the side of the highway and waiting for morning. So she elected to keep driving in the dark.
Then something strange happened.
Another car came upon her and slowed down until it was even with the driver’s side rear door of her car, and then he switched his headlights to high beam.
Suddenly she could see the road again!!
The borrowed light from the other car allowed her to see the road well enough to gradually pick up a cruising speed. They proceeded driving down the highway side by side.
The night became peaceful as she could again see with the light from her anonymous friend.
Every now and then another car intruded on their peace, but when this happened the “seeing-eye car” simply dropped back behind her before resuming its self-assigned place beside her rear door.
They traveled this way for an hour and a half, passing exit after exit without an open service station. She wondered how long it would be before this mysterious savior would have to leave to continue his own way home. When would she be alone and sightless again?
But the car never left her side.
When they finally found an exit with an open truck stop she pulled off, waving her arm out the window in thanks, but the car just followed her up the ramp!
She expected that she would finally have a chance to say thank you, but the other car just passed without stopping and re-entered the highway, going back in the opposite direction!
It was only then that she realized that this good soul had chosen to go who knows how far out of his way, just to make sure that she got to safety, with no thought of thanks, reward, or even recognition.
An anonymous savior.
This year Marsha and I have lent our light to our three precious grandchildren. They are getting their first taste of darkness brought on with the divorce of their mommy and daddy.
You never know when darkness might arrive.
So it’s important to remember:
- borrow the light of another when darkness descends on you
- lend out your own light when darkness descends upon another
For there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain:
We only keep the light we give away.
Just a thought…
Pat
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