How many ephemerals doth the dawn of Daylight hold? They say the brimming of the light veils glories yet untold; or, doth all fleeting time and shadow ebb with trails of gold?- “Diurnal,” a poem I scribbled while watching the sunrise on June 27, 2025
Somewhere, woven into human interactions, pain leaks out. If you train your heart and mind to look for the wounds, the battered places, you’ll see it too…those damp, mossy hollows where sick things wait to be unraveled.
Sometimes, I reread texts or stare a little longer into people’s eyes when I talk with them. And I wonder, where does your pain leak out? Where is the wound you’ve hastily bound up in the lonely shadows of your life? Where is the part of you trembling beneath the guise of bravery and strength?
When I look for people’s pain, I also wonder if they know I am looking. I wonder if they notice me waiting a little longer to respond, asking carefully worded questions, and inviting them into the gentle, raw fellowship of human vulnerability.
Most times, if I wait long enough, if I listen quietly, the pain does leak out. Like ancient dust particles bound up in tightly sealed drawers and locked away in attics until a curious child releases the dusts to the air they craved, so pain soars out of its hiding places, spiraling in sun-washed light.
I used to try to catch it in my hands, gathering up the sorrows and monsters, the fickleness of worldly grime and darkness, letting the sickness seep between my fingers. Now, I just let it drip out of their soul.
Drip, drip, drip.
At first it trickles out slowly, like rain slipping between the ridges on a tree’s bark. But, in a matter of moments, it hastens, gushing from the cracks and crevices of shadows and regrets. Each droplet echoes on the floor and spurs deeper hollows to overflow with the freedom of vulnerability.
I love those moments.
I love human rawness and the intimacy of being broken together, sitting in puddles of each other’s tears, letting the blood and shame of our hearts meld into a commonplace where the Divine may wash us afresh with something new, something wondrous, something whole.
And somehow, while the pain leaks out, new light leaks in.
Last week, an old friend and I laid down our defenses. He spoke with the weariness of a lonely sojourner. “Everyone around me seems stronger in faith, lower in sin…it gets discouraging.”
His words settled heavily on my heart. “I feel it too.”
There was a pause, a flicker of connection. Like light peeking through curtains, we caught glimmers of the comfort of raw fellowship fighting against the shadows of guarded hearts.
We let the layers fall, lowered the masks. I opened the curtains of my soul so he could see the bitterness boarded up in mildewed boxes. He opened the doors that locked up his heart and let the burdens of past shame tumble into the daylight.
Then, we waited in that moment, with all the grime exposed, all the darkness turned to light, all the monsters unmasked. And it was beautiful.
As all the pain leaked out…new light leaked in.
It didn’t make us whole, but the blinds were broken. The simplicity of humanity was the new soil beneath our friendship’s roots. And while we waited there, the Savior’s grace breathed fresh colors of sunlight into the open windows of our souls.
But, sometimes, pain does not leak out so gently. Sometimes the unraveling is loud. Sometimes the shadows overflow with such passion that passerbys gather to watch it embrace the daylight, wondering if the brilliance will outlast the bitterness.
This morning, I awoke to the Sunlight peaking through the vines crawling over my windows, creating a kaleidoscope of filtered light. The birdsong bid me rise and swallow the dawn in my soul, brim with the brilliance of morning-song.
I gathered the tendrils of light and carried them with me to the African marketplace. Likely, when you hear the word “marketplace” you picture stalls and spices and cloths.
But I see faces.
I see the souls who slumber still, the friends I have loved and cried over and pleaded for; I see the darkness that meets me when I step upon the red, dirt ground.
My teammate and I prayed before we entered, as we do every week. Our plea was the same as always: Lord, let it be today. When our prayers had been lifted up to the throne which is ever open to the cries of mortal men, my teammate smiled at me. “Into the battlefield.”
I returned the smile, “Ever onward.”
This is a weekly tradition of ours. Into the battlefield, she says. Ever onward, I reply. And then, indeed, we walk into the battlefield, ever onward.
Today, as we sat between crowded stalls, surrounded by spices and soaps and threads, we were met with a fiery, young girl whose religion was her passion. She drew us into a debate, which we eagerly joined in love and hope.
And oh! How pain leaked out. Dripping from the bitterness of her every word, seeping through her frustration at our conviction, there was a wound which gaped with the lack of the knowledge of God. Between words exchanged, my teammate and I whispered prayers of grace. Light anew, Lord, birth light anew in these hollows of heartache.
While we talked with her, a small boy stood nearby, quietly listening. I smiled at him. “You may sit by me, if you’d like.”
He scooted closer and rested for a while. At one point he left and returned, bringing several other children with him. They sat and listened intently to this clash of light and darkness, which lasted for hours. And as the sun rose higher into the endless sky, more passerbys gathered—sitting, standing, watching, listening.
Between moments of sharing, my eyes filled with tears at the bitter beauty of it all. All these souls were bound in darkness, leaking pain, yet drawn to the light He had woven into our words by His grace.
At last, the bystanders were riled with our claims and began to argue amongst themselves. We asked if we could pray peace and truth over them. Everyone gathered and as I opened my hands to pray I caught the little ones watching. With curious, willing hearts, they opened their hands and bowed their darling heads too.
When the prayer was done, the conversation complete, the adults dispersed, I looked again to the children. “What do you think about all of this?”
The oldest, about fourteen, answered. “They do not hear because they do not want to.”
How my heart swelled with hope. “And you?”
The boy smiled. “I believe what you say.”
My teammate and I, overwhelmed with delight, asked clarifying questions, searched these little ones for sincerity and understanding.
When their hope seemed true, I looked at each of them, gently soaking in the peaceful joy in their eyes which were washed in light anew. “Knowing truth comes with a responsibility. We have shown you how to share with love and conviction. Now go and do the same with your friends. God will go with you.” They smiled with the pure faithfulness of dear, willing children, stood, and went to do it.
How beautiful it was to watch them run off so eagerly. How very near were the threads of daylight after darkness, warmth after wormwood, glory after grime.
There in the market place, among strangers and rice bowls and puddles from the year’s early rains…pain leaked out. It flowed in our debater’s questions, it spilled from the bystanders’ confusion, it gushed within the burning of me and my teammate’s sorrow over those who slumber in their sins.
Yet, as the pain leaked out…new light leaked in.
For the debater’s questions did not go unanswered, the bystanders’ souls were sewn with seeds anew, my teammate and I witnessed the faith of little ones whose hope flickered with all the joy and brilliance of a star’s first yawn.
“How many ephemerals doth the dawn of daylight hold? They say the brimming of the light veils glories yet untold; or, doth all fleeting time and shadow ebb with trails of gold?”
I scrawled this poem into my journal with all the scratched scribblings of a pilgriming poet whose thoughts pour out faster than moments can measure. I will leave you to search out the answer for yourself. But, as for me, the latter has been ever true.
Never have I met a time or shadow that did not bear traces of the Dawn; never have I seen pain leak out where light did not also leak in.
I have found morning spilling into the remnants of my darkest nights while confessing shadows and releasing the monsters of my heart. I have seen sorrow morphing into brilliance as slumbering souls gathered ‘round the brimming light, drawn to its beaming even if repulsed by its message.
And sometimes, in moments of laughter or fellowship or music, I let the beauty fade to a soft blur—a subtle hum of human heaviness woven into a springtime blossom. In those quiet places of my heart, when I weigh the sorrows with the rejoicings, I see all the pain leaking, slipping, seeping.
Drip, drip, drip.
Then, in a wisp of birdsong, a patient tune of love that dances through the vines crawling up the windows, I watch the light leak in.
Because no matter how deeply the night beckons for us to morph into its shadows, drifting into the rhythms of nocturnal hollows, our souls still pulse with the longing to be diurnal—of the day.
And, my, it is marvelous.
Thank you for sharing this, Rue. All your writing reads like poetry. Thought-provoking and beautiful!
No words, Rue, except How great is our God. And, ever onward. 🤍