Look Up:Clothed in Light

My father told me repeatedly I would never amount to anything.

But THE Father told me I am a winner.

As I sit here in front of my computer I want you to know I am not writing this from a safe comfortable distance. I grew up with an alcoholic father. I know what it is to live in a grey world. Sometimes a black one. And I know the moment you face the choice — do I let someone else's darkness become mine? Do I become a victim and stay there? Or do I choose differently?

I chose to follow the light. Step by step. Even when at times all I had was a small flashlight.

When I was young I didn't have words for what I was longing for. I know now. I was longing for a Father who would clothe me in light. The moment I asked Jesus into my heart I was adopted by God. And I finally had THE Father — the One whose light, unlike anything the darkness can touch, cannot be taken, cannot be stolen, cannot be sent back as evidence of failure. Because here is what I have learned about light:

Light changes everything it touches. And it cannot be undone.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation — whom shall I fear?" — Psalm 27:1

I have two friends who are in the dark right now. And I suspect some of you are too. Not the kind of dark you sleep through — the kind that arrived with an illness different from anything before. Not just physical. A darkness that came with it, quietly draining the light, the fight. And sometimes news arrives quietly, not like a thunderclap, just a slow heaviness that settles in and doesn't leave until one day you look up and realize the darkness has become a pit and you don't know when that happened or how to climb out.

Maybe you know this place. Because the pit is not exotic. It is not someone else's story. It is Tuesday. It is the month that won't end. It is the waiting room and the test results and the 3am and the silence where the answers should be. The people who love you say everything right and mean every word and somehow the words still land just short of the place that needs them most.

And in that place the darkness always brings the same lie.

Don't bother looking up. There is nothing to see up there. No one is there. This darkness is what defines you now.

The lie is not just cruel — it is calculated. Because Jesus said "you will know the truth and the truth will set you free," which means the opposite is also true. Believe the lie and it will keep you bound. The darkness knows this. It is not just trying to discourage you — it is trying to bind you to a story that was never yours. The curse my father spoke over me was designed to keep me small, keep me down, keep me from ever becoming what THE Father said I already was. It would have worked — if I had been willing to believe it.

The freedom is already waiting. Right here. In the middle of the darkness. Not on the other side of it. But THE Father will not force you to look up. He simply paints with light — extravagantly, personally, relentlessly — and waits for you to choose.

"You will know the truth and the truth will set you free." — John 8:32

But look at that photograph. The land is in complete darkness. The lake is black. Everything at eye level is shadow, and if you kept your eyes down — if you believed the lie — this would be a photograph of nothing.

But I looked up.

And there is the Milky Way. Thousands of pinholes of light as if pressing through heaven's floor, the galaxy itself visible, and in the corner just the faintest blush of what is coming. The darkness is not hiding God — it is revealing Him. You can only see the pinholes because it is dark. The very condition the darkness uses to bind you is the exact condition that makes THE Father's light visible in ways the full brightness of day cannot show you. Not a distant God but a close one, so close His light is pressing through dot by dot, pinhole by pinhole, whispering the same thing over and over:

I am here. Look up. The lie was wrong.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." — John 1:5

Following the light step by step is not always dramatic. Sometimes it just means picking up a flashlight and walking out into the dark when everything in you would rather stay where it is warm and known and safe. That is what I did one cold morning at Mono Lake.

I did not plan this trip to photograph a sunrise. I had come for the wild horses. But camera ready, flashlight in hand, I made my way across dark ground before the rest of the world was awake. I couldn't see what I was walking toward, only what I was walking away from. The darkness of the childhood curse spoken over me was not going to be my story. So I kept following the light, one step at a time, even when it was only a small flashlight beam showing me the next few feet of ground. Because I have been learning — slowly, repeatedly, apparently forever — one lesson that keeps finding me:

Obedience before understanding.

So I went.

The change in the sky started happening before I had a word for it — first just a bruise of color along the horizon, then the clouds caught it, and this is the part I need you to understand, the clouds caught fire. Not after the darkness cleared. Not once everything was exposed. In the middle of it. The ancient tufa towers stayed in silhouette, hard and unchanged. But the water — the water closest to the light became a mirror of it, reflecting back every color THE Father was painting with light above.

Like me.

Not because I was strong enough to change, but because I turned toward the light and let it have its way with me. That is the difference between a heart that stays hard in the darkness and a heart that turns toward the light and reflects it. The darkness cannot make that choice for you. Neither can the light. Only you can turn. Only you can let it have its way. The hard things in your life may not move. But you can.

The darkness thought it was a wall. It was actually a frame. And over all of it, completely unbothered by what hadn't changed yet, THE Father painted something so extravagant, so personal, so wildly unnecessary that I forgot entirely why I had come.

I was there for horses. God had other plans.

"For God, who said 'let light shine out of darkness,' made His light shine in our hearts." — 2 Corinthians 4:6

I have photographs of every stage of that morning — from the first cold hint of color to the full light of day — and when I look through them something stops me every time: when we have the full light we don't need as much color. The extravagant painting — the impossible oranges and purples and pinks set on fire across the whole sky — that happens in the in-between. The not-yet. The threshold place between darkness losing and light not quite winning. That is precisely when THE Father goes absolutely over the top. Not at noon. Not in the full light when everything is exposed. In the waiting place. In the pit. In the month that won't end. In the morning after the news that arrived quietly and settled in like a weight.

That is when He picks up the brush and paints with light.

And at the end of every single day — when the clouds refuse to let go of His paintbrush and hold the color longer than seems possible — He reminds us again before the dark comes: look up. I am here. I will be here when the light goes.

When I saw these colors I didn't know yet that they weren't just for me. THE Father did. He was already painting for two friends who would enter the darkness months later — before they knew they would need it, before I knew I would be the one to bring it to them. And perhaps He is painting for you too. Right now. In whatever dark place found you — being told by circumstances, by illness, by cruel words, by your own exhausted heart that the darkness is all there is.

Once again the darkness is lying.

THE Father's light cannot be stolen, cannot be sent back as evidence of failure. It wraps itself around you in the dark without saying a word, clothing you in color you may not even be able to see yet. The darkness is not your story. What THE Father is doing with it is.

"I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, who summons you by name." — Isaiah 45:3

I took this photograph in Alaska and I called it Following. I was sitting in the tidal shallows watching this young brown bear follow the confident lead of a tiny gull across the flats as THE Father painted the world in golden pastels, and I was struck by the bear's gentle humble posture — this powerful creature quietly trusting its smallest neighbor. Here is what you need to know about gulls and bears: usually the gulls follow the bears hoping for clam scraps, trailing behind waiting to take. But this one walked ahead — leading instead of taking, giving instead of consuming.

That is the Holy Spirit. Not following behind cleaning up leftovers, but going ahead — into the mist, into the unknown, into the golden light you cannot quite see yet, just far enough ahead to keep you moving, trustworthy enough to follow even when you cannot see where you are going.

"But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth." — John 16:13

And the bear — wet, head down, still in the middle of the in-between — walked behind with the most gentle humble posture. Not diminished by the following. Completed by it. That is not weakness. That is the most courageous thing in the photograph.

My two friends are that bear right now, and perhaps you are too — wet, head down, strength drained, moving through the mist one step at a time. The Holy Spirit is not behind you waiting for the scraps of whatever faith you have left. He is ahead of you, already in the next moment you cannot see, already in the healing that has not arrived yet, already in the golden light painting the world around you whether you can feel it or not. You are already clothed in it.

THE Father is not going to force your chin up. He simply paints with light — above you, around you, ahead of you — and waits. The freedom is already there, waiting in the middle of the darkness, not on the other side of it. Right here. Right now. In this. The choice — just like mine at that cold dark lake with only a small flashlight — is yours.

Will you look up? Will you follow?

"Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine." — Isaiah 43:1

The darkness has been lying to you. Don't bother looking up it said. But God who sees you has been painting His light above you this whole time — every evening when the clouds grab onto His paintbrush and refuse to let go, every dawn when impossible colors catch fire in the in-between, every pinhole of starlight as if pressing through heaven's floor to whisper what it has always been saying:

I see you. You are precious to me. I have called you by name.

Look up.

THE Father is painting the light of His love above you.

And He has never once said you would never amount to anything.

"See, I [God] am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." — Isaiah 43:19