Candlelight Counseling

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:2

We ARE walking in darkness….

Our Prayer is our hope
O Come, O come, Immanuel

Tonight, I would like to speak into the darkness with three stories and three questions.

This the longest night of the year, when the darkness seems unending, we come together to acknowledge our shared sorrow. For many, this time exacerbates existing sadness, intensifies our feelings of being out of sync with all that Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas.
We are in Darkness – devoid of light – of hope and of comfort.
In the dark, all manners of things can and do happen
In our childhoods, we longed for comfort, for the bedroom door to be left open, maybe a night light left on or music playing. We feared the dark, the unknown and the unknowable. Several years ago, a Military Mom called me to say that her daughter was experiencing anxiety due to her father being deployed to the Middle East. Working with her the next day, I discovered that the child’s fears were vastly different from the Mother’s. She was not worried that her Dad was in danger, nor did she fear that he could get shot., (reasonable fears given the fact that he was in Iraq in a war zone). Her Mom was the contact person for her Dad’s battalion and there had been an incident. Basically, something had happened on deployment and all communication to/from the Unit had been stopped. When that happens, they call it “going dark.” The little girl had overheard her Mom telling someone that she had no idea how long it was going to be dark. At six years old, she laid awake in bed that night with terror in her heart. The child translated that to her Dad being in the dark. Her Dad was in the DARK. She imagined a place with no windows or lights or candles or heat or any comfort. The DARK was the scariest thing that she could imagine. Being alone in the DARK……

The second story comes from my childhood, the first of two times I experienced the total absence of light. It was the summer of 1965 and the only time that our Indiana grandparents, Aunt and Uncle and cousins came to visit. One of our grand adventures was to tour Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs. I have one very vivid memory of that summer as a four year old. We were deep in the cave and suddenly we were plunged in total darkness. Perhaps the guide had announced that the lights were going out, but when they did, I was suddenly, totally unprepared, lost, disoriented and terrified. No one was holding my hand and I was completely bereft of any sense of anyone being near me. Did I scream? I remember the overwhelming fear. As an adult, that sense of sheer panic came again in my life during way too many MRIs, the slow loss of loved ones to chronic illness, depression, Alzheimer’s unexpected deaths and unwelcomed life changes. Many of those things happened when I felt alone,
One of those dark times we were here in this sanctuary and I remember barely being able to sing this song: O Come, O come, Immanuel,
O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high,
And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

I needed someone, something and that Christmas season, I sang this song through sadness.
And I just wasn’t sure who I needed or what could help alleviate the darkness which surrounded me…..

The final story is recent. This last week, I attended a virtual International Counseling Conference with speakers from several countries as we learned about the impacts of the ongoing pandemic, financial and emotional crises which are taking place all over the world. Argentina, the Philippines, Greece, Uganda, the story is the same: Depression, anxiety, fear, pervasive fear, economic instability, food insecurity, loss of jobs, loss of hope.
O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high,
And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.


I also dialogued with teachers, who with their own stresses took time to open up a safe place for their students to share their hearts. Here is one story in the teacher’s words: My heart aches. Never in my almost thirty years of teaching have I been faced with such a heavy heart. Today my babies opened up to me in our connection meeting like never before. The feelings of isolation, hopelessness, fear, anger, loneliness, distrust, lethargy, and more… filled their hearts and minds and came tumbling out in our group discussion. It started with my asking why we weren’t turning in our work and then one brave soul spoke up. “I’m just so sad and scared all the time!” I’m crying as I write this. One baby said, “I feel guilty complaining that I’m horribly depressed when so many people are dying of COViD. It doesn’t seem right.” She tells me that the discussion continued as to why the kids weren’t turning on their cameras. They said that they just didn’t want to be seen, that it didn’t feel good and that it didn’t feel like school and…..
The People are walking in darkness….
O Come, O Come Immanuel….. and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here.
We are, as world community, mourning.

The first question came out of my interaction with the little one. What could we give your Dad to alleviate the darkness? For us, the question is what do we need in the dark?
She and I met several times as she created all the things that she thought could help her Dad. She drew candles and lanterns, flashlights and campfires and at the very end of our time together, she drew windows to let in the light. What do we need to lighten our darkness? We need hope and we don’t need judgment or condemnation or being told to be joyous. We need a hand reaching into our darkness and turning on the nightlight or playing a song or just sitting with us in our times of sadness. Just as her counselor, I gave her the space to find her way, we need to give ourselves permission to feel what we’re feeling and to hang onto the hope – the light and the promise of Immanuel…..

The second question came from within that cave, who did I need?
I remember the smell of the cave, the dampness that came from being underground and the clear awareness that there was nothing I could do to change the darkness. I don’t recall screaming, nor does my sister recall me creating a scene, but to this day, I can hear the strong, authoritarian voice of my Mother telling the guide that the light needed to be turned back on, that her daughter was afraid. I needed someone else to speak into my situation – to show me a way – to return me to the light. That is what we can do for each other, but we must be oh so careful to not act as Job’s comforters, but to be there instead with a hand of comfort, the gift of presence and slowly, be allowed to relax the hold the darkness has on us.

The final question is all of ours, where is God in the midst of this? Where is He when we cry,
O Come, O come, Immanuel,
O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heav’nly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.

First, know that the darkness of grief comes from having loved, that grieving is a normal, human, even God given response to loss. Our job, as believers, is to hold onto that hope for each other, to hold a hand, to share the light. The darkness of sorrow is not a sign of unbelief, but a sign of the depth of the relationship we can have with Immanuel.


I have walked in my own sorrow and in the course of the last twenty years, I have walked alongside so many who have grieved and mourned their losses. I give them space and a place of non-judgment, there is nothing that one could say in my office which would cause me to run screaming out the door. We need safe places. But what do we all need as we, The people who are walking in darkness and have seen a great light? We are those living in the land of deep darkness upon which a light has dawned. That Light? It is the hope which Christ gives us. Perhaps that light shining feels too far away right now, as when the psalmist cried out, in Psalm 42
I say to God my Rock,
“Why have You forgotten me?
Why must I walk in sorrow
because of the enemy’s oppression?”
Like the crushing of my bones,
my enemies taunt me,
while they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why the unease within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him,
my Savior and my God.
Later this week, we will hear the rest of Isaiah 9, but for now, we walk in darkness and hope for Immanuel, God with us to bring us comfort, to heed our prayers and we wait….. The light feels so far away, but we are not alone…… but for now, we wait….

O Come, O come, Immanuel……

I wear several hats and one of them is an outside counselor in a preK-8 and a 9 -12 school where I support the children who are eligible for my services.  I know that is vague, but if I gave you more details, I’d have to…. (You know the rest).  This week has been crazy and has included field trips, lock downs and police calls.  Several of the teachers are frazzled and some are walking around the building looking as if they have just been attacked by a horde of raging children.  Which brings me to my topic.  Some days, you get the bear and everything seems to go smoothly and nothing permeates your aura of calmness and collectedness.  Other days, well, on those days, the bear wins.  What makes the difference?  Is it attitude or the phase of the moon?  Is it the collective craziness which periodically permeates a school or an organization or family?  Are you and I the cause of allowing the bear to get us?  What do you think?  Can we control the bear?

Perhaps you are wondering what a counselor, educator, some time pastor and spiritual director might have to blog about.  Well, so am I!  Please check back here on a regular basis to see what I have to say.  Let us ponder and process life together…..