Living Without Senses
For awhile now color has been fading from my world. It’s not what you think. My eyes aren’t all of the sudden going bad…and yet maybe they are. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me, and yet every time it cycles around it doesn’t get easier. It’s a shock to the system every time it comes around. It starts off slow; it appears the sun is shining brightly, but the sky isn’t as blue as it should be. Almost like a thin haze is beginning to settle on the horizon. Sometimes I’m moving too quickly through life to even realize that it’s happening, but by then it is already too late. Soon I begin to live in a world mixed with mostly blacks and greys, and only the most vibrant of colors stay true to themselves: the blue of my daughter’s eyes, the green leaf on a tree, the red of an apple. But as the Darkness begins to settle over the land, even the vibrancy of those colors begin to fade until my entire world is a drab sketch where no color exists.
Many people are color blind and live their entire life without seeing the beautiful palette that the Creator has used to paint our world. But the Darkness is not satisfied with only expunging color. It begins to swarm the rest of my senses like an invading army that only seeks to destroy. There’s a coffee shop down the street that I like to visit. Something about beginning the morning with one of their foreign roasts that wakes up my soul to begin the day afresh. My cup from this morning is sitting cold on the table because I can neither taste nor smell the deep, earthy flavor I so enjoy. You’d be amazed how little your appetite is when you cannot taste something. Although you might think not being able to smell might be a good thing, it is not. To not smell the new life that comes in spring, or the scent of my wife’s hair is another robbing of joy by the Darkness. There is no joy too small that the Darkness doesn’t hunger to consume. Unfortunately, I know what comes next and it is what I fear the most.
I’m already hard of hearing, but I know when the colors fade, when my tongue cannot taste, and my nose is merely a decoration, that it’s not my normal loss of hearing. The birds don’t chirp in the trees, and I cannot hear the pitter-patter of my children’s feet running down the stairs to greet me in the morning. The sweet song of my wife’s laughter no longer graces my ear. Why is hearing the thing I fear losing the most to the Darkness? Well you may not know but hearing gives rise to Faith, and Faith gives us Hope. Without hearing there is no hope.
At this point it is difficult to rise out of bed, and yet it is also difficult to sleep. It’s a strange world to live in when the Darkness comes. You look forward the entire day to lying in your bed and letting the grace of sleep overcome you, yet the moment you lie down sleep runs away. Even though I cannot hear the joys of this world the cacophony of sadness rings louder than ever. It begins as a slow beating drum….thump…..thump….thump….thump..thump.thump. It’s like your own heart is removing itself from your chest because it can no longer bear living in the world with the Darkness. I wish my heart would take my mind with it as it left my chest. For in the Darkness the mind becomes my greatest enemy. Thoughts lash out at me like thousands of arrows shot at once and since I can no longer hear I have no shield to protect myself from these arrows.
The drabness of morning cannot come soon enough in the night, and yet I dread the morning as much as the night. If there was any kindness in the world there might be a timeout button. A pause in life so that I might catch my breath, that I might reset for a moment, and yet no kindness has ever occurred. The frantic busyness of daily life is overwhelming when the Darkness isn’t around, but when the Darkness comes its as if everything is on hyper speed. It’s a herculean effort to just survive the tasks of each day. And the worst part, the worst part is that the world expects me to smile through it all. There is no place for brokenness, sadness, or anything else that isn’t cheerful in this world. If I do not smile I mine as well be a limping calf on the Savannah that has strayed from the herd. The lions of society will come in and smell my weakness, my fear, and try to kill me. But alas I make it through another day and shuffle in through the door.
When I bend down to hug my children a tear streams down my face because the Darkness is finally complete. I can no longer feel their warm embrace. I don’t even dare to find my wife because to not feel her lips against mine is not something I can bear at the moment. I trudge upstairs and lie in bed as the Darkness completely washes over me like a tidal wave. I sink deeper, and deeper, and deeper. I try to cry out, but no sound comes from my lips. At this point there is nothing to do but wait.
If I had my senses I would know that it will not be like this forever. That one day again the sun will shine brightly upon my face, and a dinner of laugher shared with family and friends will come again. That one day I will relish in the sweet embrace of my children. And that one day I will smell the new rain freshly fallen and in that moment I will hear again the Promises I so desperately need. But until then I will wait in the darkness. I do not know how long this Darkness will last, but in the mean time I will wait.
