Shades of Light Read online

  SHARON GARLOUGH BROWN

  For David, my beloved son

  You inspire me with your courage,

  compassion, and wisdom.

  Words can’t express how much I love you

  and how proud I am of you.

  The light shines in the darkness,

  and the darkness has not overcome it.

  JOHN 1:5

  If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

  and the light become night around me,”

  even the darkness will not be dark to you;

  the night will shine like the day,

  for darkness is as light to you.

  PSALM 139:11-12

  Contents

  PART 1

  Even There

  PART 2

  Worn Out

  PART 3

  Keeping Watch

  PART 4

  Even the Darkness

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

  LIST OF VINCENT VAN GOGH WORKS

  PRAISE FOR SHADES OF LIGHT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE TITLES FROM INTERVARSITY PRESS

  Part One

  EVEN

  THERE

  Where can I go from your Spirit?

  Where can I flee from your presence?

  If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

  if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

  If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

  if I settle on the far side of the sea,

  even there your hand will guide me,

  your right hand will hold me fast.

  PSALM 139:7-10

  It’s so beautiful here, if only one has a good and a single eye without many beams in it. But if one has that, then it’s beautiful everywhere.

  VINCENT VAN GOGH,

  LETTER TO THEO FROM LONDON,

  JULY 31, 1874

  PROLOGUE

  February

  It was the sighing, the news article read, the awful sighing that caught the woman’s attention in the half-light of morning and led her down to the beach. She said the young whales were the worst, their splashing frantic, their moans tortured.

  Wren Crawford closed her laptop and pushed her sandwich aside on her desk.

  She knew better than to spend her lunch break reading stories about whales beaching themselves by the hundreds half a world away. She could barely manage her own daily intake of sorrow working with traumatized women and children at Bethel House. She didn’t need to read about another potentially futile rescue mission. Her current therapist, Dr. Emerson, would agree: limit exposure to faraway tragedy and anguish as much as possible. Her job provided more than enough for anyone to absorb.

  She fixed her attention on the many children’s drawings and paintings taped to file cabinets and tried to shake the whale image, but it was no use. All she saw were the volunteers with their buckets, laboring to keep the survivors cool and damp by dousing them with water, desperately cooperating with a high tide to turn the creatures upright and coax them out into safety. Then they would form a human chain and try to keep the rescued ones from stranding themselves again. Already the carcasses were strewn for hundreds of yards along the New Zealand coast. It would be several days before they could assess whether any of their efforts had succeeded.

  She picked up her phone to text Casey, her best friend since middle school. He might tease her for being sensitive, but he wouldn’t condemn her.

  Need a mental reset, she wrote.

  What for?

  Beached whales in New Zealand.

  How about kittens somebody dumped in the alley?

  Wren punched his number. “How many?”

  “Three.”

  “Where?”

  “Inside the dumpster. Heard them crying when I took out the trash.”

  She would never understand cruelty. Not to animals, not to children, not to any who were vulnerable. “Where are they now?”

  “Playing with my shoelaces. And ow! Biting me. Hey, hey, Theo. Here—play with this.”

  “You already named them?”

  “Just one.”

  “Does Brooke know?”

  He laughed. “Not yet. Not sure how she feels about cats.”

  Wren hoped his long-distance fiancée would approve. “Well, you’re a good man, Casey.”

  “Or a sucker for cuteness.”

  “Either way . . .” A coworker appeared in her doorway with the familiar Sorry to bother you but there’s an emergency look on her face. Wren held up a single finger to indicate she’d be there soon. “I’ve got to go. But maybe you can investigate whether there’s a no-kill shelter or a cat rescue agency? And they’ll probably need to go to a vet. What’s your schedule like? I’ve got to work late.”

  “It’s okay. I got it. We’re not shooting anything today.” Casey, a freelance videographer, had been working for months on a project highlighting human trafficking in West Michigan. “But come by after work, okay, Wrinkle? I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay.” She took one final bite of her sandwich. “But if there isn’t a safe place for them . . .”

  “I know, don’t worry. Then I’ll keep them here until we can figure something out. And hope they don’t destroy my couch in the meantime.”

  “Thanks, Casey. You’re a star.”

  “Each of us lighting our own little corner of the world, right?”

  Yes, she thought as she hurried down the hallway. In the midst of all that was crooked, dark, and despairing, Shine.

  There was a sketch by her favorite artist, Vincent van Gogh—a pencil, chalk, and ink drawing of a gnarled tree with exposed roots, half torn up by a storm, yet clinging to the earth. Vincent had seen within the tree roots an image of the struggle for life, for hope. He understood it.

  That was the picture that came to mind as she listened to her coworker recount the story of the latest referral: a mother beaten up by a boyfriend who had been pimping out her four-year-old to his friends. She’d come home from work early and discovered it.

  Wren wasn’t sure if she was going to faint or vomit. She only knew she had to find a way to cling to something solid. Like Vincent’s tree roots. She gripped the edge of the table where she and Allie were sitting.

  “You need a minute?” Allie asked.

  Wren nodded.

  Allie set aside the police report. “I keep thinking if we were in Chicago or Detroit, I might not be surprised by all of this, but Kingsbury . . .”

  Exactly. In college Wren had been stunned by statistics on abuse and human trafficking in West Michigan. That’s when she had decided to put her compassion to good use and be part of the rescue mission in Kingsbury and beyond. But the darkness was relentless.

  She bit her lip. She was not going to cry. Because if she started to cry, she might not be able to stop. Is that happening a lot? Dr. Emerson had asked her a few weeks ago. Crying that won’t stop?

  Not a lot. But some.

  At work?

  No. She managed to hold it together at work. But it was exhausting, always being on high alert, always bracing for the next crisis, always living on the verge of losing control and crumbling.

  She stared at her hands and pictured Vincent’s precarious tree.

  Would you be open to getting some more help? Dr. Emerson had asked. Maybe taking a break from work?

  She couldn’t. They were already understaffed, and still, the kids kept arriving at Bethel with their moms. She glanced out the window at the February gloom. “The baby whales are the worst.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud. “Nothing.”

  Allie paused, then said, “Are you okay? I mean, not just about this, but
in general. You’ve seemed a little off lately.”

  Wren tried to receive the observation as concern rather than criticism. “Just feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything.”

  Allie nodded. “Well, don’t let the enemy drag you down. This is frontline stuff, right? You’ve got to take up your shield of faith and fight back against the darkness. That’s what we’ve all got to do.”

  Wren sighed. “Some days I don’t have much fight left in me.”

  “I know. Me too. That’s why we’ve got to keep renewing our minds. We’ve got to take every thought captive because otherwise”—Allie motioned toward the hallway—“all this will pull us under.”

  And on the days when she didn’t have the energy to take thoughts captive and renew her mind? On the days when the undertow of grief and fear was too strong to resist? Then what?

  Allie seemed to be reading her thoughts. “It doesn’t matter how we feel. We’ve got to stay grounded in the Word. It’s the only way to survive. The only way through is to pray. Constantly.”

  That was exactly what Wren found hardest to do whenever the darkness pressed in. She didn’t have the energy to read the Word or pray. But she wasn’t going to say that to Allie. She didn’t need guilt and judgment layered onto her sorrow. She pushed back her chair. “I should get in there, meet Evelyn and her mom.”

  Allie eyed her with compassion. Or was it pity? “Tell you what—how about if we swap places today and I do the intake for this one?”

  Wren was going to argue. She was going to assert her competence, demonstrate her resilience, and prove to Allie she was emotionally and spiritually fit to push back the darkness and fight the good fight. But she didn’t have the strength for bravado. And besides, with all the legal and medical complications involved in this type of case, she couldn’t risk missing something. Or falling apart in front of everyone. So she said, “Thanks, Allie.”

  “You’d do it for me.” Allie picked up the folder. “You’ve still got time on your lunch hour. Why don’t you head to the art room? Take a deep breath, center yourself.”

  Good idea. Wren retrieved her phone from her desk drawer, then went to the art room and closed the door behind her. She would paint and listen to music. That would help center her. She chose a few tubes of acrylic paint from the storage closet, set up an easel and a small canvas she had already primed, and selected one of her favorite songs, “Vincent,” for inspiration.

  Starry, starry night, Don McLean sang as she squeezed cerulean blue onto her palette. Like Vincent, she could paint in blue and gray.

  Look out on a summer’s day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul.

  Vincent knew. He understood. He was a companion in darkness.

  She mixed the blue with a bit of violet until it was almost black. Then she spread the gloom onto the canvas with thick impasto strokes, sculpting the dark into shadowy mountains and caverns. Strokes of contrasting yellow would brighten the sky, but she didn’t want it brightened. The purple darkness soothed her.

  She stepped back and scrutinized the scene. She would blur the violet with gray and smudge the clouds into a brooding haze. Nothing luminous about it. Not like Vincent’s dark, which shimmered with light.

  “Let it be what it is,” Dr. Emerson might say. “At least you’re painting.”

  She needed to create space for doing it more often, especially when she felt stressed. Art had always helped her to be well—not only her own art but also Vincent’s art. As a child she had fallen in love with his paintings and for years had studied and savored the honest poetry of his letters. She’d even written her college honors thesis on the potent spirituality of his art and the chiaroscuro of his sorrowing, rejoicing life, the shadows of despair streaked by what he called “a ray from on high.” In his letters, in his sketches, in his paintings—even in the darker ones—beamed the hint of radiant hope.

  With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget . . .

  She wished she could see and forget. She set down her palette knife and brushed a strand of her short, dark hair away from her eyes. She envied those who could see and forget. But that had never been, and likely never would be, her gift. Social workers, artists, caregivers, people of faith and compassion—theirs was the call to see and not flinch.

  She rinsed off her brushes in the sink and pinched the bristles to dislodge remnants of dark sky. Maybe she would have the kids paint rather than draw today. She could analyze their use of color, study their subject matter for indicators of trauma, and note her observations in their case files.

  She rubbed her tinted hands with lukewarm water and glanced over her shoulder at her work. What would someone conclude about her if they saw it? What might Dr. Emerson note in his file? She turned off the faucet, went back to her palette, and dipped her broadest brush in gray. Then she smeared paint over the entire canvas, erasing every bit of evidence.

  She didn’t have margin for melancholy. The children needed her to be strong. The women needed her to be hopeful. She could pull herself together and be resilient. She had done it many times before, and she could do it again. In the midst of all the chaos and churn, she could cling like Vincent’s roots. And press on.

  1

  October

  Time for your medicine, Wren.” Kelly, one of the kinder nurses, entered the room with a little plastic cup of pills and a glass of water.

  Wren set her pencil down on the bed. She had been so immersed in drawing she hadn’t heard the summons to the nurses’ station for morning medications. Kelly, thankfully, wasn’t one to scold.

  “That’s really good,” Kelly said, studying the sketch of a woman carrying a bucket. “I didn’t know you’re an artist.”

  “Just an amateur.”

  “Well, I can’t even do stick figures.” Kelly handed her the cup. “I’m glad you’re drawing.”

  There wasn’t much else to do. Sleep, sketch, attend groups. Now that the immobilizing lethargy had lifted and the racing, terrifying thoughts had begun to quiet, her creative impulses stirred again. She swallowed her pills dutifully.

  “The others just went down to breakfast,” Kelly said. “I’d bring you a tray, but Dominic wouldn’t like it.”

  No, he wouldn’t. Her new case manager had given strict instructions about the importance of engaging with community as much as possible. “I’ll be right there.”

  “I’ll walk you down. Come find me at the nurses’ station when you’re ready.”

  She waited for Kelly to exit the room then returned to her sketch. If she couldn’t expunge the image of the whales and the rescue mission, even all these months after first reading the news story, then she needed to work with it.

  That’s what Dr. Emerson had recommended during their last appointment together, just before he retired in June: be open to what the image might want to reveal. And get on the schedule with one of his colleagues. But she had never bothered to make an appointment with another therapist. She was tired of change, and it required way too much energy to start over again with someone new. If she could even find a good match. That was always a challenge. And then if you found someone good, they might move away. Or take a maternity leave and not return. Or not take your new insurance. Or retire.

  She shaded the woman’s hair with the edge of her pencil. Maybe it wasn’t a rescue mission. Maybe the woman was carrying a bucket to make a sandcastle with a child, like the red plastic ones she and her mother carried years ago whenever they walked the Australian coastline near her childhood home, looking for shells. The purple ones were their favorite.

  But her grandfather always warned her that blue-ringed octopuses lurked in the tide pools, concealing themselves in shells or beneath rocks. She had to be vigilant because with one bite they could paralyze a girl and knock her unconscious and make her unable to breathe. Pop knew a girl who—

  She needed to breathe.

  —was looking for starfish with her grandfather when—

  Breathe.

  She placed one ha
nd on her chest, the other below her rib cage, and inhaled slowly through her nose to allow her diaphragm to fill, just as a therapist had taught her years ago. She tightened her stomach muscles as she exhaled through pursed lips. Keep the chest still, very still. Once. Twice. A third time. There. Settled.

  See? You’re fine. Just keep breathing, nice and slow.

  After her morning group she would draw a relaxing day along the shores of nearby Lake Michigan, where no whales could beach themselves, where no venomous octopuses lurked in shadows, and where children could skip and play and build castles to their hearts’ content, happy and carefree children, not terrified or traumatized or abused like the ones who came to Bethel House, but laughing and splashing, innocent and protected and safe.

  She tucked her notebook inside her pillowcase so her current roommate wouldn’t find it as the last one had. Then she fastened her shoes with a plastic grip that had replaced her confiscated shoelaces and shuffled toward the nurses’ station.

  As Kelly escorted her to the dining hall, it was impossible not to overhear an anguished groan and cry of protest from behind a closed door, the same groan and cry of protest that had run on a continual loop in her own head the past few days: I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong here. Please help me.

  For the last several months she had convinced herself that with more than ten years of therapy and six different therapists behind her—not to mention her training as a social worker—she had collected all the tools she needed for fighting the good fight whenever her nemesis reappeared. But she was mistaken. She’d also been naively hopeful, thinking she could wean herself off her medications without talking to her doctor. Some would say it was her fault, not being proactive about pursuing care when she needed it. But she thought she could manage on her own.

  And she had, at least for a while. She’d made it almost four months without Dr. Emerson and eight without Casey. Some might say she deserved a bit of credit for lasting that long without breaking, especially with the ongoing strain at work. All the whales. Too many mama and baby whales.