Like most people, I would prefer to escape deep loss and to avoid hard and challenging times. Yet the dark has given me gifts that are immeasurably deep. It was because I wrestled with the dark that I learned to see beyond what was happening on the surface of my life, and grew to understand that everything is more than it appears to be. In time I knew that the dark is not absent of light. Light moves within the dark at a great depth. With this realization came a glimpse of the inordinate beauty and power just beyond our sight. The experience of darkness is not reserved for a single, crushing or defining event. We encounter darkness in the many challenges that arise within life. Some are great and some small, but each hold the same potential to alter the way we look at ourselves, and the way we think about our human journey.
— from the book Stars at Night: When Darkness Unfolds As Light by Paula D’Arcy
