When the Darkness comes for a Man and it blinds out the Light
Growing up I remember some of the characteristics that people would use to describe me like “Laid Back” or “Funny” or “adventurous” and at least from what I recall these seemed to be pretty accurate descriptions. Looking back to my teenage years and young adulthood I can’t recall too many extreme periods of darkness for me but now it seems as though over the years of constantly pushing to improve and grow financially, in my marriage, and as a father simply because something inside of me is constantly pushing me forward to be better?? But why?? Can’t things ever be good enough!!!! Better than what???? I provide for my wife and kids, I love my wife and kids, but then at times I push them far away with the excuse that I’m “protecting” them?
On the surface my life would seem very good, and it is! So why do I still experience periods of extreme darkness… Times when I question my parenting mistakes, my marital mistakes, the hurt and the pain that I’ve contributed to over the years due to my imperfections and my mistakes…this is when a wave of darkness comes over me to the point when I have difficulty getting out of bed and just want to hide and rescue those closest to me from this imperfect MAN by isolating myself…. the source of so much pain. I become filled with sadness and guilt and these feelings begin to steal me away from my loved ones and into isolation.
I’m sharing this because this is where I’m at and my hope is that other Men who may be feeling this at times know they are not alone.
We are who we believe that we are and so when we begin to give energy to these negative thoughts about past mistakes and use these thoughts to define who we think we are, we breath more life into these thoughts and we go deeper and deeper into darkness. I’m still struggling with opening up and being vulnerable to my wife by telling her exactly how I’m feeling, but the truth is that there is no other path to the relationship we both desire and time stops for nobody as you can see by the comparison of the 2 pictures above and below…..
The truth is that it is OK to find ourselves NOT OK at times and when this happens, we need to understand that there has to be darkness for us to have LIGHT. There will be periods when we just feel scared about our relationships, when we feel as though we could have done things different in the past, or the results in our lives aren’t what we wanted or expected. The PAIN we feel in this darkness is the fuel that we need to make change in our lives. I’m practicing giving MYSELF the things that I want to be able to give my family like unconditional LOVE, Forgiveness, Empathy! It’s a work in progress for sure but the one thing I know to be true is that until I’m able to give it fully to myself it will be impossible to give it to others and I will continue to work on doing better in this area.
I AM LOVE, I AM FORGIVENESS, and I AM PERFECT!!!!!!!
And I also know that YOU ARE LOVE, YOU ARE FORGIVENESS, and YOU ARE PERFECT!
