One Stubborn Light

 One Stubborn Light

Where I live, there are lighthouses everywhere. 

North shore, south shore, out east- you can’t swing a seagull without hitting one. 

I grew up with them, so I mostly took them for granted. You see one and you think: Oh yeah, another lighthouse. Like spotting yet another Starbucks or Whole Foods. (Helpful, yes, but hardly soul-stirring.)

But here’s the thing: when your life explodes- or quietly crumbles- you start noticing things differently. 

A diagnosis you weren’t expecting. 

A relationship you thought would last forever ending in silence. 

Or, like me, one terrible mistake that detonated everything. Suddenly, you’re not breezing past lighthouses or sunsets or stars anymore. You’re grabbing onto them like life preservers.

It’s like that scene in The Matrix where Neo takes the red pill. Once you see, you can’t unsee. Before, I was programmed: wake up, rush to work, power through, fall asleep, repeat. For 27 years, I lived at 100 miles an hour. 

Now that I’ve been forced into the slow lane, I notice things I never did before. The stars. The honking of geese. My children, in all their messy, miraculous humanity. Erin, in ways that make me ache with both regret and gratitude. Even myself, though I still keep squinting at that one.

And then there’s the lighthouse.

After what I like to call my “life event” (sounds nicer than “accident”), I started walking at 4 a.m. every morning. December. January. Freezing. Dark. My breath visible, my thoughts unbearable. And out there, fifteen miles away, I’d see this tiny, steady beam of light sweeping across the horizon. A slow, stubborn spin of comfort.

Every morning I looked for it. Waited for it. Needed it. It felt like God Himself had borrowed a flashlight, leaned down the tunnel of my darkness, and whispered: I’m here, Mike. Keep going.

So I did. I stumbled forward. I cried. I pleaded. And still, I walked. Because there was this light in the distance telling me the darkness wasn’t the whole story.

Now I can’t look at a lighthouse the way I used to. They’re no longer just nautical décor or quaint postcard material. 

They are sermons. 

They are promises. 

They are stubborn beams for the lost and the lonely, spinning their way into our nights, insisting: You are not beyond saving. You are not too far gone. Keep walking.

Here’s what I know now: we all need lighthouses. Sometimes they are actual towers by the sea. Sometimes they are geese honking overhead, or stars shimmering at dawn, or a friend who answers your text at 2 a.m. when you expected silence.

The point is: the light is always there. We just have to notice it.

Because when you’re in the tunnel, the lighthouse doesn’t move. 

It stays. 

It waits. 

It shines. 

And maybe we should consider this:   

We spend our lives trying to build empires, but what saves us in the end is always smaller. Quieter. 

Just one stubborn light saying: Keep going. You’re not alone. You’re not done.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” 

- John 1:5