Several years ago I was facing what would prove to be the most significant crisis—in the old sense of a violent turning point—in my life.  As I saw the clouds of that crisis beginning to form, I prayed earnestly that our Lord would show me what to do.  His answer was immediate and unambiguous: “Follow me into the dark and I will be your light.” I decided to follow.  

Today, years later, I want to bear witness that it did come and that when it came it came—in very real ways—through you and your work with me.  

In the early days, when the shadows were still new and terrifying, it came like a guiding hand in the dark, a companion presence offering words of consolation when I could not hope, assurance of the path when I could not see, and handholds when I could not stand.  When I think back on those days—triage days, field hospital days—what strikes me now is how, dark as they were, my memory of them is not just of darkness, but also of presences beside me, forms in reverse silhouette lightening the dark.  The form was yours.  The words were yours.  The hands were yours.  

In time I began to listen to those voices, those voices of solidity urging me into a new reality, urging me to see that I was not, in fact, alone in a forsaken wood but was in an ancient and blessed wilderness. And not only this, but also that this wilderness was actually a chrysalis, a place of transformation where the life that had so terrifyingly dissolved would be transformed into a new life, brilliant and winged.  These voices told me that I needed to embrace this uninvited embrace, to give myself to it, and to let it consume me.  That in being consumed, I would be made whole.  That in losing myself, I would find God, and in Him all things.  And for many months now, I have listened to that voice and let it lead me into a place of silent waiting, of habitual quieting; sightless still, but believing that light would come.  That voice was yours. It was in that silent waiting that I, at last, began to imagine a new life.  But what would be its pattern, its shape?  And when my wings finally dried, where would they bear me?  As these questions began to form in me, they found an answer.  And what was that answer?  Not merely a form.  Not merely a voice.  But a friend.  A friend who gave me tools to understand my life.  A friend who taught me to use those tools.  A friend who bore with me as I began to put them awkwardly to use.  A friend who not only urged me toward the path of life, but who also bound herself—himself—to walking it with me.  That friend was you.  

They emerge in the midst of darkness as a form of light.  They speak as voices of wisdom in a wilderness of transformation.  They become friends who, not content to merely help you imagine a new life, choose also to indwell that life with you.  

Dr. Greg Thompson, Artist, Author Scholar

Executive Director, Voices Underground.