Part 0 (Running Away) — Part 1 (The Pyramids) — Part 2 (Beaches and Caves)
A Child of the Light
There were few things Cassie loved more than the sun. Immediately after she passed, I made a big tribute to Cassie in the form of artwork on her casket. It incorporated everyone’s favorite memories of her. I mention this only because multiple people said the first thing that came to mind when thinking of Cassie was the beach, and if not the beach, than the sunshine. Cassie loved the beach.
If you wanted to see Cassie happy, all it took was a trip to the coast with a Cuban sandwich from Publix. That’s one of the reasons our honeymoon was spent at Vilano Beach, near St. Augustine.
Catching Some Rays
Accordingly, if there was anything I was going to do while ducking away in Mexico, it was hit up the beaches. They’re what the Riviera Maya is known for! I would be in Cancun, in Playa del Carmen, in Tulum, at Cozumel Island. I couldn’t avoid the beaches if I tried.
It was an interesting part of my trip to be sure. The water was absolutely beautiful. At the first beach I went to, a new-found friend roped me into snorkeling. Of course I didn’t realize until after signing up that I didn’t have any swimwear on me. I had no choice, I had to go snorkeling with a bunch of strangers in my underwear. I also quickly found out that my camera, labeled as waterproof up to 8 meters, was less than waterproof at only 2 meters. The thing broke as I was taking a picture of stingrays passing by.
Cozumel was cool. Playa del Carmen was bustling. And Cancun’s Playa Delfines was… sadly reminiscent of past trips with Cassie. But the reason why is a story for another time.
I went to Cancun’s beaches on my way to the airport the morning I left. There were heavy and foreboding clouds to the east, covering up the sunrise. It was quite a view. But it was also a good reason to leave before those black clouds caught up with me.
Nyctophobia
In this blog, I’ve spoken to Cassie’s love, the light she showed, the jokes she made, the great things that made her appear such a saint. But I think I might be doing a disservice if I put her on such a high pedestal all the time. She had flaws and she had fears. She had one huge fear in particular—the dark.
Just like there were few things she loved more than sunshine, there were few things she hated more than the dark. She always said it was because of traumatic experiences in her childhood. It reminded her of the feeling of having to walk the streets near downtown Jacksonville at night. It reminded her of times with her bio-mom before she was 5-years-old—times that made her feel unsafe, insecure, and scared.
From then on she always needed a night light when she went to sleep. She told me about how even in middle school and some of high school she kept a lava-lamp turned on in her bedroom every night. Her fear didn’t disappear when we married. That was something which bugged me to no end because Cassie wouldn’t let me hang blackout curtains in the bedrooms we slept in, despite streetlamps shining directly in through our windows. She simply had no peace of mind in the dark.
Surely The Darkness Will Hide Me
So, on the flip-side of my trip to the beaches, I also decided to visit some of the cenotes, or sinkholes, that the Yucatan Peninsula is also famous for. There are two broad types of sink-holes there: the kind that are more like big, beautiful sinks in the forest and the kind that are like big, scary holes in the ground.
I was more interested in the big scary holes in the ground. The first one I visited was called Cenote Calavera (Skull Sinkhole). It was full of bats. It was dark and creepy. Light fell through holes in the ceiling so that one darker corner of the cenote formed what looked like two leering eyes and a mouth. There were scuba divers popping up from the depths of the cave, having navigated the aquifer system below, visible only as little green lights that would slowly rise towards the surface.
On my second-to-last day in Mexico, I decided to visit Cenote Multum-Ha. After driving out to the middle of the tropical jungle, I found the little tiny attraction. There was a booth with a couple showers. There was a Mayan man sitting under a straw-roofed booth with a desk and a calculator. And there was what looked like a little well.
What appeared to be a well actually turned out to be a circular flight of stairs. After paying a whopping $2.50 USD, I started climbing down. Then I kept climbing down. And I went on climbing down. I descended about 60-70 steps until I found myself on a dock inside of a massive cavern. It turns out Cenote Multum-Ha is just a giant cave with two small lights illuminating the place. On closer inspection, the walls were covered in seashell fossils and what looks like calcite crystals. There are all kinds of stalactites hanging from the ceiling along with tree roots that have grown down through pores in the rock. And the water is crystal clear. The walls are so rough and varied that there was not even an echo as I swam in the waters alone.
The place is dark, isolated, and quiet. Not exactly Cassie’s cup of tea.
Despite The Dark
One of the primary purposes of this blog is to remind the church that there are blessings in the bleakest seasons of our life. Our lives are not only made of sunny days. Our understanding of God needs to account for the pits we fall in and the dark valleys we pass through. We need to know what to do, where to look, and what to make of our faith when we find ourselves so far away from the light we love.
In life’s dark valleys and caves, there are blessings available we would never be able to see if we stayed on the sunlit shores. They may not be blessings the way we traditionally think of them. However, there are opportunities to grow and mature, to be consoled or to comfort, to gain wisdom and give counsel, to see new perspectives of the greatness of God and the smallness of our idols. There are countless things we can be thankful for later if we accept them during the hardship.
The caves seems scary at first. There’s not a trace of the sunshine you depend on. Nothing is familiar. All you want is to find a way out. But with just a little bit of light and a little bit of attention, you will realize that in the cave there are crystals in the walls, life rooting it’s way down from above, and peace in the still pools of water. Our love and God’s love can appear even more beautiful when it shines, even faintly, in these dark places.
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Book II
We follow a God who is the “light of all mankind.” He is a God who proclaims that though “the light shines in the darkness, the darkness has not overcome it.” Jesus hated the dark too. But he did not run from it. He was called to the places and to the circumstances that seemed darkest. Though he always had the option to run, he embraced the most harrowing of those times. Jesus looked for the goodness of God in the dark. He looked with love. And we are better because of it.
I can’t encourage anyone to fear the dark like Cassie. But I will always encourage everyone to look for the light despite the dark, the way she did.
Part 0 (Running Away) — Part 1 (The Pyramids) — Part 2 (Beaches and Caves)
