Darkness Before Dawn

Openness in the tenderness of dark

The liminal space of darkness before dawn is sacred. The edginess of my world softens, the streets are blanketed with innocent silence, the day bears a bounty of possibilities. I can almost touch new mercies.

This time is also significantly supernatural in my story: from 3 am - 4 am, I have had the most blood-curdling fears and attacks buffet me. I remember, one night, seeing myself die by gunshot, by stabbing, by trampling, by explosion—and I know the vivid casting of fear was from the enemy. I know.

I have also been roused from sleep many a 4 am with a prayer or conviction in the secret place within me that mind, spirit, and heart collide. I have heard (heard!) Jesus gently say, “enough,” and known exactly why He said it and what He meant.

I used to photograph my youngest after night feedings, when it was just he and I up in the quiet of the night. I didn’t know this with my eldest (because I was a scared, new mother, too nervous to stay present and too worried to feel grounded in confidence), but these wee-hour feedings were a lullaby of love and nourishment—a song over my babies that I could sing only for a short time. I wanted to remember the blanket of sweet darkness that bonded me and my little one.

When my littlest was weaned, I returned to work outside of the home. I remained enamored with the early morning, and took photos of the sunrise as I crossed the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge on the way to work, to remind myself to notice, to behold, to stay awake to the tenderness of a new day.

Last night, one of my mentors, Susan Seay, encouraged us to ask better questions for ourselves, ones that allow us to examine answers with curiosity and action rather than condemnation and accusation. She said that the questions we ask before we sleep may even be grappled with by our subconscious. I was eager to test that theory, but alas, sleep eluded me.

Right now, as I type, my firstborn is sleeping on an improvised bed he manufactured from a yoga mat and his favorite comforter. We passed each other in the hall at 2:30 am, both wakeful and restless, so I got to ask him better questions than “why are you up so early? Why aren’t you sleeping?” I wouldn’t even know how to answer that question myself.

Instead, he read a Kwame Mbalia novel and I worked on a project; he curled up on my office couch and I made a cup of coffee; he stretched out on his makeshift bed, and I got to sit contentedly in his presence; he fell asleep, and I felt connected to my baby.

This was an answer to a question I held too close to verbalize. Wasn’t he just my little one? Now he is long and angled where he was once squat and cherubic. How do I hold him after I can no longer carry him?

It may be morning where you are. I hope that today you hold yourself open, if you can: open to the artistry of the new day, to the exquisite creation all around you, to the tender opportunities to be in the presence of loved ones, to the sacredness of the comforting dark. Open to unexpected answers to the questions whispered in the recesses of hope.