the black lullaby

When I was a little boy I used to be afraid of the dark. Even when time came for me to have my own room, I seldom used it. There was something about the dark that was always so eerie and uncertain and indefinite. As I grew older, my fear of darkness melted away but then life brought along with it so much to fear.

I look around me today and I see the people around me and I sense the things that they’re most afraid of. ‘Will I lose the one I love?’ ‘Will I grow old before I do everything I’ve wanted to do?’ ‘What if I die tomorrow?’ ‘Will my children be safe when I’m not around?’ ‘What if they figure me out?’ ‘What if I get sick?’

We’re all afraid of something. We’re all fighting hard every day of our lives to make sure that our worst fears don’t come to pass. We pray. We make promises that we don’t intend to keep. We buy insurance. But does any of it really help? Isn’t there still that little voice that mouths off words of insecurity inside your head?

I’ve always tried very hard to understand fear and how it can be dealt with and then I began thinking of how children approach the subject. Like I said, when I was a child I was afraid of the dark but aside from that, there was actually nothing else (apart from my grandmother) that I was afraid of. As a child I didn’t try to understand the meaning of life and where we were going with it. I simply lived and enjoyed every day.

I think I’d much rather be afraid of the dark for no apparent reason than be afraid of all the other things we burden our adult lives with, giving each and every one of them such broad explanations so that we have more cause to fear them.

Just something that I felt like putting down… it’s true what they say you know, there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.

Spent the day with TMS yesterday and she played this song from ‘Touched by an Angel’ from an episode called the 151st Psalm. It was performed by Wynona Judd when her character Audrey has to finish this song she started writing when her son was born. She finally finishes it and sings it to her son with half the neighborhood singing backup and during the performance her son (who’s suffering from a lung disease) finally passes away. The title of the song is ‘Testify to Love’ and you should read the lyrics and listen to it whenever you have the time.

I played the song to myself over and over again today on youtube and wondered if I would be able to do the same thing. Could I testify to love for as long as I lived even when I’ve lost so much to it? I guess you could say I’m having a crisis of faith again and I’ve not had a lot of ‘me’ time to figure things out. 

Sometimes I feel like life is about loss. From the day you’re born till the day you die it’s all about loss. First you lose your innocence, then your youth, then the celebrities you grew up with, then the ones you love, then time and finally yourself. Emotions, I still maintain, are the great flaw in the grand design and if it weren’t for them, at least we’d be content. But their existence brings with them fear and confusion and anger. 

Why, in a world of so much loss, would people still want to continue loving? Why do we waste our love on people who don’t feel the same way about us? When does love run out? And then I realize that it never does. Anger goes away. Misery doesn’t last for ever. Confusion fades in the light of answers. But love stays on forever. 

I think maybe God intended it to be that way. But as human beings we grow up to be selfish with our love and we come to believe that everyone we love should love us back. We want every bit of kindness we share with the world to be given back to us. I think that’s where we go wrong. Love has no expectations. 

So will I continue testifying to love? I think I will.