Hordes of Hell: What to Do When the Darkness of Life Surrounds You

To be humbled means to be brought low, and this is something I learned first hand as I wrestled through a season of personal change. Life has a way of bringing you low, and if you’re not prepared for it, the end result can be frightening. With each season, I find that I wasn’t as prepared as I thought.

How do you know when you’re in such a season? Trust me, you’ll know. When you’re surrounded by what feels like thick darkness and the devils seem to be howling in your mind. It’s when you can’t find your footing, and you realize that at any moment you could be knocked back down.

For some of us, it might be overcoming a tormenting addiction, or being knocked back on our heels because of the loss of a job. It could be a relationship that’s gone bad, or the death of someone you love. Whatever your trial might be, for you, it feels like the end of the world, because your mind has nothing to hold on to, and you can’t see any light to move towards. The darkness is too thick, and you’re suffocating.

Light Overcomes Darkness

You’re in need of light—the brightness of an outlook that can dispel darkness and provide you with a hope that can stabilize your vital signs. You cannot contend with the hordes of hell if you can’t even get out of bed, so the first step is to bring light into your situation, because even a light as faint as a match is more powerful than any darkness.

Darkness cannot overcome light, but light will always overcome darkness. Therefore, pursuing light is your initial means to picking yourself back up again. If not, you will roll over and die. You perceive the fight is too much for you.

Get Control of Your Mind First

What is the light? The light is the truth, and the truth is what we most need because much of our torment is not based in reality. It’s based upon a false outlook that we create through our imagination. If you’re in such a difficult season, then you know firsthand what I’m talking about. It’s like having a high speed color printer in your mind that’s shooting out page after page of negative images. It’s too much for you to handle.

Until you can get some control over your mind, this will continue, so your priority is mind control. The problem is that this is easier said than done. This is where other people come in. Find someone with a healthy attitude that you can trust and let them speak into your life. They’re not in the darkness, so they have a better grasp on the light. They can bring that to you to help you through the most difficult moments until you can do this yourself.

Disciplining your mind is very hard when you’re living through a struggle, but you can do it enough to ease the pain. What I find helpful is to move my body and talk to myself. If you sit there, it’s too difficult. The body movement combined with speaking out the truth about who you are, and what you can do, will pull your mind in another direction. The challenge is that you’ll have to do this repeatedly, but after a few days you should be feeling stronger. Again, so much of this is in our minds when it comes to how we actually feel about our situation.

Until Your Strength Returns

You have to survive before you can thrive, so try not to do much else for now than to keep your head above water. You only need to stabilize yourself until you can get to the place where you can fight for yourself. I know it seems impossible, but that again is an illusion. Just keep yourself tied to the people and resources you have until your strength returns, and it will.

Do what you can to survive, but remember that you cannot do this alone when the season you’re going through is unusually brutal. You needn’t remain a victim all your life, so we’re only trying to get you to the place where you can stand on your own and then become an asset for someone else. My hope is that the words I’ve written will help keep you in the fight against the onslaught of darkness. Stay strong, my friend.