Find me in the dark.

I have been with people in their darkest moments.

I've seen blood smeared across the tile floor of a bathroom, a woman crumpled and sobbing against the door, still holding a shard of broken glass to her wrist.

"What would you do if your client killed someone he loved, and then himself? Would you be able to come back and do your work and have compassion for people?" "Yes, I would hope so," I answered. He rejoined, "You're too innocent. I want to protect you from this. I'll be your doctor and savior. I'll love you."

Another woman sat on her bed, staring at the floor, quietly telling me of how the aliens had taken her up to space, raped her, killed her, and deposited her back on earth to live in the anguish of the memories. As she spoke, she began to cry, and I reached out for her hand. We cried together, in the yellowed light of a dingy room in a psychiatric facility.

To hold someone's hand in these moments is awe-inspiring. To cry with someone, and to feel with someone, are both gifts. Empathy is one of the ways, I'm convinced, in which God turns evil to His good.

I don't share these moments to discourage or dampen. I write about them to find God in them.

When I think about the hundreds of such moments I've been given, I am in awe. I cannot, and won't ever, justify their pain by my growth. But as one existed, the other was graciously given. What does it mean to have a God who dwells in those moments? A God who lives in the spaces between logic, and intuition, and reason, even as He also shows himself through those same entities? A God who finds us in the dark. One who hears our stories of rape, and deception, and sees our blood, and holds our hands still.

His gifts, and his call, are irrevocable.