I spent October in mourning. I feel odd saying that. I feel guilty saying that. My life has been so much worse than it is now, and the Lord has given me so many blessings, but there is still so much that is heavy and so much that is missing and so much that was lost. I needed to mourn those things. I still need to mourn those things. I am so quick to try and cover the dark parts of life. It is a necessary coping mechanism from almost twenty years of struggle; I often feel surrounded by darkness, but I force myself to search for the little bits of light, the gifts from God, the stars among the night. But as Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to mourn, and I had been pushing back that time until it all came crashing down last month. This time of year is the five-year anniversary of some very traumatic medical issues that still affect me today, and everything I lost hit me even as I recognized the things I gained.
I often feel like I am always at the edge of a cliff. Sometimes, it is storming. The rain makes my feet slippery, and the winds push me until I am nearly off the edge. In fact, sometimes I feel I am off the cliff, hanging on with all the strength I can muster. Other times, I am back from the edge. It is sunny and flowers surround me. But I am still on the cliff. And I can still see the edge. And I know that no matter what I do—no matter how firmly I plant myself on a different part of the mountain, no matter how many steps back from the edge I take—I can always end up back at the edge. It is out of my control. It feels like I am stuck in an endless cycle of suffering. The suffering is scattered with good weeks or months or even years where things are a little bit easier, where I don’t have to search so hard for the stars, but it always returns to near darkness.
I was thinking of this one day during class. We were talking about the moon in a short story we were reading. I have always been a night owl; I always feel most alive when the moon replaces the sun. I never really felt a connection with the moon or stars, though, until I read Psalm 8:3-4, which says, “When I observe Your heavens / the work of Your fingers / the moon and the stars / which You set in place / what is a human being that You remember him / a son of man that you look after him?” It was one of those moments where a verse hit me, embedded itself in my heart, demanded I memorize it and carry it with me. I love the moon and the stars now. I always think of this verse when I see them and remember how miraculous God’s love for me is. And as we talked about a short story with the moon, my professor mentioned a spider’s web and how there is no true center or path to get there.
I don’t know why—I guess it’s because I had the suffering and the stars on my mind—I thought of a spiral of stars. I apologize to my professor, because I immediately stopped taking notes and started sketching out an idea. I was afraid I’d lose it if I didn’t write it down at that moment. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to see it anymore if I couldn’t sketch it. And even though I can’t draw, I did my best to represent what I saw in my mind.
I saw a spiral of stars, and the star in the middle was the end. It was Heaven. It was a final, eventual, unshakeable, and unavoidable good. And spiraling out from it were all these stars. Some were brighter than others, and those bright stars were the remarkable events in life, the ones that are fantastically good and terribly bad, the ones that make an impression. I only had a pink pen and a blue marker, so I made the pink stars the fantastic and the blue ones the terrible, but there would be so much purple, too. And even though the bad events kept happening, going on and on and on, the spiral was not never-ending. The spiral stopped at the largest, most pink star. And every blue star, every ring of the spiral, brought life closer to that final good.
I kept thinking about my spiral of stars, and then, a few nights ago, I saw another image. I was walking to study with some friends, and it was dark out. I had (and have) been feeling isolated even though I was surrounded by people. I knew God was with me, too, but I still felt such loneliness. As I stopped for a moment to look at the sky, to remind myself of God’s presence, I imagined four stars. There was a smaller one in the middle and three larger ones surrounding it. I realized t it was me, surrounded by God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I realized that wherever I am in the spiral, the star that is me is surrounded by the stars that are Him. I rushed to my study spot and jotted down the image before I forgot it.
I’ve been redrawing those four stars over the past four days, and today I felt called to write about them. Life is unbelievably sweet and unspeakably bitter. And there is a time to mourn the bitter and celebrate the sweet. But the greatest thing to get from life, the only thing that really, truly matters, is knowing and loving and serving the Lord. No matter where I am in the spiral, as long as I am living for Him and looking for His light, the rest doesn’t matter. I seem to be surrounded by darkness, but I’m surrounded by stars. Surrounded by Him. And there is no brighter place.