Fourteen candles

No it's not someone's birthday. It's a widespread power outage over SoCal tonight. Less fun.

The last two days, it has been triple digits in temperature here, and I'm thinking that our electric company just about exploded when every person turned their AC on at once this afternoon. Thus the power being out for several hours. Daddies can't get home on jammed freeways. Food is slooooowly spoiling. The kids were under threat for opening the fridge, freezer, or house door, for fear of shifting the temperature balance I had established earlier today.

When it hit 82 degrees indoors, we abandoned ship for the neighborhood pool. I sliced up a cantaloupe and manually lit my burner to make a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches to take with us. (I was like a bomb squad person, carefully reaching into the meats drawer of the fridge, door cracked only the width of my arm.) Dinner poolside was heavenly, compared to being cooped up.

I'm typing quickly, on my very limited laptop battery life (and now you know I can for reals type, since I can't see the keys). I also have limited cell phone life. And very, very limited lighting. I did manage to find 14 candles, and have them nicely lit in all the rooms. It's sort of lovely, in a way.

And God - what a good God He is! - knew my little guy would be afraid of the extra dark. He hung a big, bright moon in a cloudless sky right outside his window. I told my son it was his own special nightlight, because God knows what he needs.

The kids and I talked about Callahan tonight. He's our 13 year old dachshund, who recently went fully blind. I felt sad for Cal, remembering that his world always looks dark now. I noticed that after he went blind, a funny thing changed about him. For the first 12 years, he was a very feisty, wiggly little dog. Every time I'd pick him up to put him outside or into the car, he'd fight and fight to get down and run wild again. As soon as he lost his sight, he'd go limp when I picked him up. It was startling at first, since I've grown used to wrangling him.

But when he lost his sight, he learned quickly to depend on mine. He trusted I would do him no harm and that I knew what he needed. I pick him up now, and he patiently, calmly waits for where I bring him next.

What a lesson this is for me {sigh}.

When my vision in my life grows dark, on those days I feel totally blind, do I trust Jesus enough to stop fighting? Do I lay limp, secure in His more than capable arms, and let Him carry me?

Oh how I long to be growing ever aware of my blindness. Oh how I wish I never feared the dark.

Suddenly, deep down, I feel grateful for this dark all around me. It's a visual reminder that when the "dark" blankets our days without warning, when we're suddenly struggling to navigate our lives, tripping, worried, and afraid, we need to cease striving. Be still. And trust the One who never lets go.

He knows what I need. The end.