While Reading The Dark Knight of the Soul, by Gerard G. May, M.D. [guest]

“The soul lets go of everything, daughter, so that it may remain more completely in me. The soul itself no longer lives, but I.”

I stilled myself.

There I was.

Staggering. Exhausted. Sweating. Tense. Muscles aching. Barely alive.

I looked in my eyes. I looked at myself. I saw myself. Objectively. Sad. The bricks. So heavy. Cutting. Gouging my skin, blood gushing. Me – oblivious. Moving at a snail’s pace. Determined for some unknown, irrelevant destination.

Then I felt it.

HEAVY despair. Exhaust. Piling the bricks harder and harder on myself. Weight. Wanting to throw them off. Unable to do so. My back. Stuck. Panged.

And my own will. No No Press them harder. I can’t let go. This is how it has to be. Harder. Harder. More weight. I need it.

Why? Why??? I asked myself. But I really didn’t know. I couldn’t let go.

Then I begged Jesus – reason with her, I said about myself. There He was. I wanted to yank the bricks off. Straighten my back. I wanted to jerk my head up and look Him straight in the eye but I couldn’t. He held my hand. I held it close.

It’s a process.

He can’t just free me. I didn’t even want or know how to be free. He bent down mimicking my hunch back position. He looked in my eyes. He was next to me. He saw me. But I couldn’t see him. The exhaustion. The dizziness. The weight. blurred my eyes. I could only see…blur.

I didn’t need to see. Trying to only exhausted me more. Instead He just held my hand. Pulled it close. And walked with me at that snail’s pace to where ever it was that I was so determined to get to. And slowly, slowly as we walked together, I saw His hand. My face saw His face. My back began to straighten like His and the blocks fell from my back as a result of the slow but sure motion.

Soon I was upright like Him. Looking in His eyes. The more I looked at Him, the more the weights dropped to the ground. And there we stood. Perfect embrace. He held me close and cradled my head. Never so precious have I been coddled. Comforting and making whole. In Him I became whole.

He is everything.

When you feel the weight of the world. When you need it. You can’t even part with it. Don’t worry about looking. Just hold that hand. He will get you through.

“Whatever form it takes, the movement of the soul and God is always finding its way toward freedom.”

“Regardless of when and how it happens, the dark night of the soul is the transition from bondage to freedom in prayer and in every other aspect of life.”

“In the liberation of the night, we are freed from having to figure things out, and we find delight in knowing what we do not know.”

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Steffeny Steiner was born in Hollywood, CA. She is a lover of adventures and enjoys documenting her travels--whether to the grocery store, another country, or inside her own heart. Steffeny also has love for coffee, community, and Africa. She loves to hear people’s stories because they excite, heal, and inspire. In Stef’s opinion, this is what life is about. She’ll be sharing some of her stories as a guest contributor and is pretty stoked to hear from you as well.