“Let there be light.”

You don’t get past the third verse in the Bible before those words are spoken. In order for the rest of the world to find meaning, we had to have light. What good is something if you can’t see it? What happened next? God, the Most Supreme Being of All, saw it and declared it good. No one will argue light is important, and no one knows this more acutely than those who have lived in the dark.

I’ve always been a generally happy person. In the past years I’ve laughed, gone on adventures, and I’ve chased the waterfalls of life. Something was missing. I had light, but as it turns out, I’d been living in the shadows. A shadow marks the existence of light; it is the very reason that a shadow exists, but a shadow forms when something gets in the way blocking the light. A shadow is nothing more than the shape of things cast on the surface because the light is on them. I was living in the shadows of a few things.

I was living in the shadows of who I used to be. Living in the shadows of what I expected my life to be. Living in the shadows of my hopes and dreams. The shadows those things cast are just like the real thing, only, they lack LIGHT. You see a shape; you don’t see a reality. If you chase shadows, you are sure to be disappointed when you catch them.

Recently I met someone who won’t allow me to be a shadow dweller any longer. He came into my life and immediately built a fire, setting my shadowy world into light again. It’s a funny thing, light. When there is an abundance of it, things start growing clearer. Things start growing. I see me. I see the world in a different light. I’m so grateful that every day seems like Thanksgiving, and I’ve been thinking. Maybe, just maybe, I should apologize to Emily Dickinson. Maybe hope is a thing with feathers. There is one thing for sure. Hope is a lot easier to see when the shadows roll back, the sky opens up, and a new day is born.

Let there be light.