Not being able to see your hand in front of your face can be scary. Unidentifiable forms moving as shadows in the dark is intimidating. That’s what nighttime feels like. It’s often pitched as this moment of abandon, depression, and complete vulnerability. But in truth, it’s a blessing.
I feel like I am currently in a night season in my life. Yet, I don’t feel anxious to get out of it. I am assured that this is where I am supposed to be right now. So much so that God woke me up to write a poem about it.
While I have been writing for as long as I can remember, I put down my poet’s pen during my late teenage years. Somewhere before or at the onset of college, I began to struggle with tapping into my unbridled creativity. I put myself in a box. I started fitting in.
However, my wellness agency partnered with a local summer school to host afternoon wellness sessions. One of the 6 components of our curriculum is Intellectual Wellness, where the students are learning to write poetry. Thanks to one of our partners, the students will be published authors as well. This portion of our culturally relevant wellness curriculum instills confidence and inspires creativity. As I sat in the session to provide support to our Intellectual Teaching Faculty, I took some packing tape off of my creative box as well.
We recently learned about free verse poems as “a poem with no rules”. This stood out to me, because I am a master of rules. If you give me rules, I will remember them, enforce them, and even add some of my own to keep everyone in line. So, to write about anything in any way and still call it poetry both intrigued and interested me. Now, here I am, awake before my alarm (it is approximately 5:45 am), pen in hand, and journaling first: a dream, second: lessons learned from said dream, and third: a right now-inspired free verse poem.
This is how I truly see the present moment. It is nighttime for me, but not the stereotypically dank and depressed type of night. It’s all of this. (See poem above.) The night is such a blessing. I’ve just been looking at it the wrong way. I need to see what’s dark and without form the same way God saw the shapeless and unmapped earth before Him. He saw it as the opportunity to design His most fascinating creation of all: Beginning.
If “right now” seems dark for you, you can still appreciate this time and season. Allow yourself time to rest, be still, and work without being seen. Give God space to create a Beginning in and through you. Here are 30 affirmations to keep you inspired along the way. 🙂
Dr. Asha—speaker, educator, published author, and radio host—is aptly known as the Creator of Healthy Conversations. Her life purpose is to teach the busy and overwhelmed how to live life abundantly. She is an educational consultant and owner of the Temple Fit Company, LLC, and she is the director of Temple Fit Health, Inc. faith-based wellness nonprofit organization. Grab one of Dr. Asha’s recent books and book her for your upcoming program.