Darkness does deserve gratitude. Some of my darkest moments, and even stretches of time, have proven to be the most fertile ground for my spiritual growth.
Driven to desperation by the inky blackness that was enshrouding and consuming my soul, I fled to the light, instinctively drawn there like a moth to a lantern.
It was there that I embraced the “sunlight of the spirit,” sometimes growing in leaps and bounds and others in tiny microbursts before the darkness descended again.
Yet as the saying goes, “it is always darkest before the dawn.” And in my life, a period of darkness has always been extinguished by a majestic, life-renewing sunrise.
And the splendor of the dawns that I have experienced has been worth every second that I spent as a shivering denizen of the lonely, soul-crushing realm of darkness.
INSPIRATION AND EMOTIONAL COURAGE: MENTAL ILLNESS, ADDICTION, AND RECOVERY 