Faith: a flashlight in the dark

Stumbling around in the dark...where do you find your hope?

I have always struggled with being in the dark, whether it be physically in a place with no light source illuminating anything, or the metaphorical notion of not knowing what is the next chapter in life for me.

I think it stems from childhood and feeling like there was no escape from it. As a way to help with this, I would string fairy lights around the room and play white noise to help. I will sometimes speculate whether this anxiety around darkness is due to my heightened sensitivity. This intensity of unease, fear and restlessness is the main reason I have had several bouts of insomnia, which I have been trying to manage.

Photo by Mike Ralph on Unsplash

As a few of you may already know, I am currently living in a third world country (Myanmar). A place not many people are inclined to visit given the current unrest. Whenever we tell anyone why we are here, we are often met with ‘what on earth are you doing there?’ it is true that a lot of people are bewildered and I don’t blame them for wondering.

One of the challenges we face here is limited energy supply, therefore power cuts can occur from five to nearly ten times a day. This is not really an issue during the daytime, when the sun is out and the dappled light dances playfully on the ceiling. It’s once the early evening twilight has passed and a heavy cloak of blackness takes its place.

There are no streetlights to pierce it. The kind of dark where you struggle to make out the shape of your feet in front of you. Thankfully, we have a backup generator, but it can take some time to kick in when the power goes out.

When I first arrived here, this really tested me and I used to get emotional being plunged into a darkness; that I had never experienced before. Panic and a tightening of my chest as I lay there in bed. Light had kept the anxiety, the dread and the unease at bay. We attribute light to safety, security or a refuge of sorts. For christians, Jesus is referred to as a ‘lamp’ for people’s feet and a ‘light’ to people’s ‘path’ in the Psalms. It can feel without light, we are literally just mindlessly stumbling around in a vulnerable state.

I spent the past 6 months literally stumbling around, working things out as I went along. When we first landed in Yangon, we knew no one and had to work out everything alone, from where to exchange local currency, where to buy essentials and which apps to download. It was hard, especially in a country where there are few foreigners and English is not really spoken. You could say it is the definition of stumbling around in the dark.

The local currency that can go up to hundreds of thousands and millions, with a confusing conversion rate that boggles me still. I am grateful to the many locals who still help me for all the times I have miscounted. Crossing the road when there are no pedestrian crossings or light, just a free flow of traffic with no speed limit imposed, is another one that was an adjustment.

The many things that I never had to think about in the UK, are seemingly magnified in a place like this. Whether it’s food hygiene (as food poisoning happens a lot here), buying filtered water, limited access to familiar brands because imports are a nightmare due in part to the war going on.

Preparing for the unexpected, living on a kind of precipice, but it’s in those moments when I remind myself that is the definition of faith. The expression, ‘a leap of faith’ does not reflect one’s own strength, but rather a relinquishing of your human strength for something more than yourself to guide the way. It’s not blindly stabbing in the dark, but trusting that you are held safe by God.

After several months of living here, I felt a calling from God to reach out to a local charity that rescues women who are being trafficked all over Myanmar. I wanted to make a difference, not really knowing what that looked like. I needed to make sense of this darkness and this unknown. I have always felt a pull toward needing to do meaningful work, that is impactful in some way.

After some time spent pushing this door, it turned out they didn’t have any opportunities, however I got invited to a house church. A place to connect with the few expats that do still live here. It was a scary prospect and one I was not ready for.

I will write about my church phobias/hurts in another post, but I have for some years been a wandering christian outside of church lol. I felt the need to go along, just for the sake of connecting. I walked in and was surprised to see so many people my age, at a similar stage of life, each with a story who understood the struggles. It was a reminder to me that you can feel on the brink of loneliness, in the dark, afraid, uncertain and even there God has your back.

There will still be days and moments when it can feel like you’re wearing a blindfold, but one thing is certain, you are never alone no matter how dark it can feel. You may even find that you are there for a reason. A butterfly’s beauty is only seen after that period of darkness, that was pivotal in its growth. I hope you can find light no matter where you are physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually.

You, Lord, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns my darkness into light.

Psalm 18:28

Love Georgie x