Dear Reader,
This morning I find myself reflecting on a human condition that, at one time or another, probably touches all of us.
Most of us have experienced being in a dark room, walking outside at night, or perhaps entering a cave where there is just enough light to see shapes around us.
In those moments, the mind can go to great lengths to make sense of what it sees.
A shadow becomes a person. A branch becomes something threatening. An unfamiliar shape becomes whatever our imagination tells us it might be.
That causes me to wonder:
Why do we sometimes prefer the shadow to the light?
Is it because fear has become familiar? Is it pride, resentment, belonging, or simply our desire to confirm something we already believe?
A shadow is not complete darkness. There is enough light for us to see—but not enough to see clearly.
Perhaps that is what makes shadows spiritually dangerous.
The danger of living in shadows is not that we cannot see at all. It is that we can see just enough to convince ourselves that we are seeing clearly.
I believe this can happen in life.
We see enough to form an opinion, make a judgment, develop a fear, or reach a conclusion about ourselves or someone else—yet we may not be seeing things as they really are.
Sometimes we live in shadows not because God's light is absent, but because something has come between us and the Light.
Fear can do that.
So can resentment, prejudice, pride, misinformation, rejection, and ideas repeated so often that we eventually stop questioning them.
Of particular concern are those things we desperately want to believe, things we are afraid might be true, and assumptions about ourselves that we have carried for years.
A falsehood does not have to be completely false to mislead us.
Sometimes the most convincing shadow contains just enough truth to appear real.
Recently I watched a CBS News discussion concerning claims about American elections. The political issue itself is not my purpose here. What caught my attention was something much broader: What happens when an assertion is repeated often enough that repetition begins to take the place of evidence?
There is nothing wrong with questioning an election, a government, an institution, a church leader, a news report, or something we have always been taught.
Questions can lead us toward truth.
But there is an important difference between asking:
“What does the evidence show?”
“How can I prove what I have already decided to believe?”
That distinction reaches far beyond politics.
And before I become too comfortable identifying the shadows in someone else's thinking, perhaps I need to examine my own.
What have I believed simply because it was repeated to me?
What have I accepted because everyone around me accepted it?
What conclusion have I reached because it made me comfortable?
And what belief have I refused to reconsider because changing my mind would require humility?
For me, recovery and faith have forced me to confront many such shadows.
There have been times when the shadows whispered:
I am beyond forgiveness.
My past defines who I am.
People cannot change.
God has forgotten me.
Because someone hurt me once, I cannot trust again.
If I admit I was wrong, I become less worthy.
If God really loved me, this would not have happened.
I have learned that we can spend years responding to a shadow as though it were reality.
Today, recovery, scripture, and God give me a different source of light.
Recovery has given me the light of sobriety and a new freedom.
Scripture has taught me something about the nature of truth:
“And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.”
—Doctrine and Covenants 93:24
I especially pause over four words:
“Things as they are.”
Not necessarily as I want them to be.
Not simply as someone told me they are.
Not as fear tells me they are.
Not even as my political party, social group, religious community, or favorite commentator tells me they are.
Things as they are.
But truth requires something from us.
It requires humility.
Sometimes light reveals things we would rather not see.
Truth may require me to say:
I was mistaken.
I judged someone unfairly.
The story I have been telling myself is incomplete.
Someone I trusted was wrong.
Or perhaps hardest of all:
I was wrong.
Changing our minds when greater truth becomes available is not weakness.
It can be an act of integrity.
Spiritually, it may also be an act of humility.
This brings me to Jesus Christ.
He did not simply tell us where light might be found.
He said:
“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
—John 8:12
“I am the light.”
Our search for truth, therefore, is about more than collecting correct information.
It is learning to see ourselves, other people, and the world through Christ.
Through honesty.
Through humility.
Through mercy.
Through love.
And through truth.
There is something else interesting about a shadow.
A shadow can exist only because somewhere there is light.
Perhaps discovering that we have been living beneath a shadow is not cause for despair.
Perhaps it means the Light is beginning to reach us.
We do not need to spend our lives defending every belief we have ever held.
Nor do we have to be frightened when truth asks us to reconsider something.
We simply keep moving toward the Light.
So today I ask myself:
What shadow might I still be living in?
What belief have I never seriously examined?
Am I willing to ask God to show me not merely what I want to see—but what is true?
And when truth challenges something I have long believed:
Will I defend the shadow, or will I follow the Light?
Jesus offered this promise:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
—John 8:32
Perhaps we do not have to spend our lives fighting every shadow.
Sometimes we simply need to turn toward the Light.
And as we draw nearer to Christ, what frightened us in the shadows may look very different in the light.
May God bless and keep you.
🙏🧘♂️💕🤗☮️
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