Always interested in the way caregivers remain steady, I asked my therapist once, "How do you stay strong?"  

   "I believe in the light within me," she answered, offering, indirectly, all the inspiration I needed.

   At the end of one encounter, I told her with trepidation that I would be traveling (she knows I fear long distance journeys.)

   "I will tend your candle if you wander past the edge of its glowing," she assured me. Her poetic way of speaking helps healing.

   Her "tending" told me someone cared enough to nurture my candle of hope if I drifted into shadow and further that I am never truly past its glowing. We all carry hope with us wherever we go IF we can just recall that Love's candle is always aglow.

   Whether or not we venture out, we are certain to wander into fields of darkness where it can be hard to remember that Love's light exists within not without.

   Faith reminds us that Love is always present, whether we notice her or not.

   "God give me strength to lead a double life," Hugo Williams writes in his poem, Prayer. "Cut me in half./ Make each half happy in its own way…"

   Of course, we all live way more than two lives. But, caregivers often divide their worlds as work life and home life. 

   What if there is trouble at home? What if work feels like a fearful place?

   Can we learn to find hope in both halves of our lives, even when one half or the other seems beyond the edge of our candle's glow? 

   "When it's time to go to bed in one of my lives," Williams prays, "go ahead of me up the stairs, shine a light in the corners of my room…If you can't oblige me by cutting me in half,/ God give me strength to lead a double life."

   When others wander into darkness, can we remember to "tend their light" until they return? When we fall into night can we remember that on Love's table the flame burns bright.

-Rev. Erie Chapman

Photograph – "Candle & Darkness" copyright erie chapman 2012