darkness cannot drive out darkness

·

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Martin Luther King, Jr.

When we look at how we view ourselves and how we’ve formed patterns throughout our lives, it will be easy to see if we’ve followed darkness or if we’ve followed light. I’m taking a step back and looking at my life from an inner child perspective. Too often we silence that child as we live out the day to day, not consciously, but just because we are focused on going ahead. We have goals, dreams and traits that shape most of our decision making on the forefront, while paying little attention to that inner child, who is basically our foundation as a person.

When the foundation of our life gets started in darkness, it’s something that is very hard to go back to and look at. That inner child that once had a voice, but lost it because of too many painful experiences, becomes someone you want to ignore rather than nurture. So as we live our life and grow, we end up trying to drive the pain deeper and deeper down so we won’t have to face it. We shut the inner child up and leave them stuck there. Thus, every choice or action you think you are making out of light and love, becomes tainted by the darkness. How can we love others when we never really loved ourselves? How can we respect others when we didn’t give ourselves enough respect to rise up and let our voice be heard? How many of our behavior patterns are influenced out of the pained and shunned child within who is really someone we hate?

I have lived my life hating myself, hating almost everything about me. I can give on the surface meanings as to why, but they are not the root. When I take a look back and allow that inner child to rise up, she will say that she is the reason I view myself with such disdain. That small child, who eventually took on everything that was put on her, became stuck. When bad things happened to her and she was faced with choices that were too hard for her, she became shame. As I grew, I didn’t want to take the shame with me so I shut her up and stuffed her down. The more I tried to be rid of the shame, the more I hated that little girl. So in essence I was driving out the hate by hating…..myself.

God recently started shining light on that little girl and slowly allowed me to see her in the light of His love. All it took was a little stepping back on my part to see how stuck and scared she is. When I’ve gone back to my past before, it was always to look at things that happened, or to work on forgiveness. I was able to work through forgiving others and eventually forgiving God, but I never allowed myself to forgive me. And that is the root core of so many issues in my life. I blame her for what others did to her, I blame her for not having a voice, I blame her for the times she did have a voice, and most especially I blame her for just being her. So I’ve lived all of these years trying to be separated from her, but where could she go? I’ve spent so much energy ignoring and hating her, instead of allowing her to complete who I am.

So with Gods light, I’m going to take a journey to rediscover her. I was resistant at first, but God showed me I didn’t have to immediately accept and love her. God simply asked me to get to know her from His heart and to look at her as someone that He loves very dearly. I was able to see and feel His tears as He allowed His love to shine down on her, and show me how much she was hurting. In my own efforts all I was able to do was shine more darkness on her, but with Him who is light, together we can show her the way out of that dark place. I need God and His light to see her better, and God needs me to eventually accept her so that I can finally be complete….in Him, in light, and not of darkness.