Caves are powerful motifs employed by humans ever since they began to tell stories. In Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, Yoda insists Luke go into a dark cave. Luke asks Yoda what is in the cave. “Only what you take with you,” replies Yoda.

Luke takes his light saber and his blaster: he is afraid of what he might find. He finds Darth Vader. They fight. And, when Luke beheads his father and his father’s helmet explodes, he sees that inside was not Darth Vader’s head, but his own.

Luke’s greatest fear, what he took with himself into the cave, was that he would become his father. I didn’t understand that the very first time I watched it in 1983. That’s the year I got married, and there was much I didn’t understand then.

Married

We all have dark moments in our lives. We avoid our worst fears and let them eat at us. My guilt at avoiding my worst fears feeds my fears and helps them grow to unimaginable size. One of my fears back in 1983 was the fear of having children.

When we married, my wife and I agreed to delay having children for several years so that we could enjoy ourselves. Our plan was that I would establish my legal career, Melinda would finish her college degree and establish her career, and we would get on firmer financial footing. The truth was that we needed to concentrate on our marriage and become a team, not concentrate on our bank account, but that’s not what we did.

Consequently, our marriage suffered. We fought. I didn’t compromise nor think of her first. She would tell you she had similar problems; we now blame our immaturity for those problems. During the first year and a half of our marriage we gradually grew not to like each other much. But then we were forced to go into our own dark cave together. Unexpectedly and at the lowest point in our marriage, we discovered that Melinda was pregnant.

Our Dark Cave

We were afraid and we felt trapped. Those months during the pregnancy were tough. Melinda had to drop out of college for a semester and quit work after the doctor put her on bed rest. We were broke, we were scared and we definitely were not clinging to each other.

Then Katie was born five weeks early, weighing five pounds. Although she did not appear to be a likely candidate, she fell sick within 12 hours of birth with Hyaline Membrane Disease — a premature infant lung disease that in 1985 was still often fatal. She went into the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. At one point the pediatrician told us it didn’t look good for our sweet little daughter. The next 11 days were hell, but finally the worst was over, and we were released from the hospital.

When we brought her home, she was tinier than any baby I had ever seen. She was down to 4 1/2 pounds. We didn’t have time or energy to be selfish or to hate each other: we had to care for and to love our precious baby. And over time our love for Katie caused us to fall back in love with each other. I’ve heard it said that if you have trouble in your marriage you shouldn’t have a child to try to save it. I believe that. As a family attorney I’ve witnessed that truth many times. But for Melinda and me, going into our dark cave together made us whole.

I wish I could remember that more often as I encounter new caves in my life: sometimes entering into the darkest places gives you what you need most. As Yoda said, “Try you must, finish you will.”