As we approach the New Year, we are getting all the emails seeking to neatly wrap up the year: Spotify has individually wrapped the year by sharing the songs you most listened to and various organizations are giving you the year’s story in statistics and sales.

I appreciate the thoughtful review of a year as much as the next girl (if not more); however, I am also acutely aware that years don’t always wrap up neatly and that the highlight reels rarely show the full picture.

What happens when your year feels like it is mostly wrapped in darkness and disappointment? What if, underneath the sweet moments, there remained a standing sense of isolation or confusion or feeling lost in the shuffle? When that is the case, the highlight reels feel heavy and attempts to wrap up the year, wearying.

I am all for remembering the high points and inviting others to share in our joy, but, if you know me, I am also for naming the hard and trying to speak the unspeakable. A few Scriptures and a few thoughts from Paul Murray’s I Loved Jesus in the Night: Theresa of Calcutta have helped me as the world seeks to wrap up its most recent trip around the sun.

Give Him Your Everything & Your Nothing

As everyone is rattling off everything that has happened and been achieved and accomplished this past year, Mother Theresa has been reminding me to give to God both my everything and my nothing.

Despite the radiance she gave off, Mother Theresa often confided in those closest to her the utter darkness she often felt. In fact, in a letter to a priest, she said, “If I ever become a saint — I till surely be one of ‘darkness’.” We know her as the tiny woman who gave her everything to God, but she took great delight in offering her nothing to him. She often felt her own bankruptcy of soul. In another letter to her spiritual director, she wrote the following line that struck me deeply: “To spend myself and yet to be in total darkness.”

Mother Theresa instructed her friend Paul Murray, “If, Father Paul, at the time of your prayer or meditation it seems to you that not only have you been distracted in your prayer, but that you have done nothing at all….First — turn to God and give God that nothing.”

The same advice seems to hold true if, when looking over your year, it seems like you have done little to nothing that you had hoped or expected. “First–turn to God and give God that nothing.”

It seems to be that God might desire our nothing more than our something. In our nothing, we are most vulnerable and dependent. Thus, to give him our nothing and to offer him our darkness, we entrust him with our most vulnerable parts. He is, after all, the God who created everything ex nihilo (out of nothing). If nothing was his chosen medium for painting the canvas of creation, perhaps he can do something with our nothing.

Darkness is Not Dark to Him

If your year seems more marked by darkness than by light, it helps to remember that even our darkness is not dark to him. As David wrote, “If I say ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you; for the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you’ ” (Psalm 139: 11-12).

What feels and appears dark to us doesn’t daunt our God. He is so radiant, so clear of sight, that our most muddled and messy seasons are clear as day to him. He sees what we cannot see. When we don’t have our own light circumstantially or internally, we still have Him who is our light. David exclaims to the Lord, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36: 9).

Micah sang a similar tune in the midst of Israel’s season of great darkness:

“Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me” (Micah 7: 8).

This is your gentle reminder that Scriptures bears witness to both darkness and light. God created both, so we can learn to hold both.

Mother Theresa was proud to look back on her life and be able to say, “I loved Jesus in the night.” May the same be true of us.