… Weeping may stay for the night

… Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

-- Psalm 30:5b

I’m such a literal, straightforward, matter-of-fact, black-and-white thinker.

All of my life, I’ve read the Psalm 30:5 passage (For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. NIV) and listened as preachers and scholars of the Word translated the verse and put it in us laypeople terms so that we could live our lives to receive the joy that comes when the sun rises. All my life, I’ve lived perched on the words of that scripture, believing that even if I cried all night long, in the morning, all my tears would have literally dried up (along with the dampness on my pillow) and, mystically, joy would greet me upon the opening of my eyes.

All of my years, I have imagined that overnight – between midnight and 5:00 a.m. – God took my stuff and changed it into something wonderful and manageable so that when I woke, things would be different and I could genuinely smile all day, walk in boldness and act victoriously. I have believed that just as dawn breaks and the birds tune up to sing, God has wiped my troubles away with the snap of His mighty fingers and I would be troubled no more. At the beginning of my day, I have banked on the belief that even after a sleepless or restless night, I would wake refreshed, renewed, and ready for the world outside the comfort of my warm blankets because God had magically, miraculously, and supernaturally transformed my issues, situations, and circumstances. I believed that the problems, sadness, questions, and multitude of obstacles I’d endured were captured in the protective web of the Chickasaw dream catcher that sways above my bed, dissipated at the first sign of daylight, and only delight encircled and swaddled me as I’ve lifted my head from the pillow. I hypothesized that the Psalmist meant last night, at 10:00 p.m., I hurt, but this morning, at 5:00 a.m., sorrow no longer seized me. Instead, there is only joy.

Well, the Psalmist was right, absolutely right. But my fatal and human assumption was that the joy I needed, was seeking, had pined for, would instantaneously appear, be there for me, when I woke the next day.

And that it would appear with no action on my part.

Confession – and geez, is it good for the Soul: I have approached the magnificent ways of God as though He was a magician. Laugh, poke fun and SMH at me if you want to, but let’s get honest – at least let me get honest. I have believed – as some of you have – that God held a magic wand and would wave it as He saw fit, sprinkling the pixie dust of blessings on those who believed in His awesome Power. When I was younger – both in years and in the Word – I believed He waved that enchanted wand of His over my life all the time. Certainly I can look around and see how I have been blessed, and these blessings come only from God.

But, God is not some hocus pocus, open sesame, magic show conjuror who grants wishes and casts spells. That’s not who God is.

Don’t get me wrong. God does do some magic stuff. Just look outside at the billowy clouds suspended throughout the perfect blue of the sky. Watch as the leaves fall from the trees that only 6 or 7 months ago birthed them. Yeah, maybe you planted the tree but you didn’t make it miraculously know how to produce leaves. Think about how your heart knows to beat, your lungs to breathe, your blood to flow, and your brains to think. Think about how your intuition, instinct, discernment and the voice in your head let you know what’s right and what should be aborted. All that ain’t nothing but magic – or mystical, or supernatural, or unexplainable. It’s just not abracadabra-ish, and God doesn’t change your life by saying “presto-chango.” That’s not who God is. That’s not how God operates.

Sigh…

Yet, God does change your life. God does dry your tears. God does replace the tears with joy, and God does do it in the morning.

But the morning is not (always) 5:00 a.m. tomorrow morning; tomorrow morning may not be the day your change comes. Tonight your weeping may be loud, unrelenting, and bottomless; tomorrow morning, the weeping may still be loud and guttural because tomorrow is not THE day your liberation from what causes you to wail will come. But your liberation, deliverance, relief from the lamentations of your life will come “in the morning.”

See, what I’m learning – after years of believing otherwise – is that, yes, the morning is free of needless trouble, but ONLY AFTER you’ve fully disinterred the roots of your nighttime; consciously, truthfully and unhurriedly studied your Self in relation to the darkness; and found long-lasting remedy for and unwavering peace from what ails you. Getting to morning free of despair means going in and confessing that you are confused, clueless, cynical, and skeptical about making love work because you never saw loving and mutually satisfying relationships exemplified. It may mean that you have to concede that your self-worth and self-respect are jacked-up because of the unhealthy, destructive, and unaffirming ways you’ve used sex to find, replace, create love and intimacy, realizing that your understanding of sexual relations is something that the media and the streets convinced you was true.

Getting through the nighttime to daylight may mean digging in to realize that the accumulation of your debt is because somebody told you or made you feel long ago that you weren’t good enough, and so to be good enough, you bought stuff to show you were good enough and you kept buying and buying and buying until you were in over your head. Getting to morning may mean that what mama’s boyfriend, the man next door, the lady who needed her grass cut (no pun intended), the sitter, or your cousin did to you made you feel worthless, like you weren’t enough and now you must psychically revisit every relationship – work and personal – and habit to decipher the adverse patterns that have shattered your peace and dictated every aspect of your life.

It’s in the darkness of the nighttime that you must shed the pain of all that was done and trust the One greater than all that has happened to get you to the morning. To come through the darkness to the light of morning, you’ve got to get as close to the starting places as you can and allow God to strip search you; do some heart, brain, and Soul surgery; burn off the stench of fleshly living; heal the scars; then set you on holy feet poised for the new day that only He can bring to light.

So, being able to rejoice in the morning (usually) takes longer than the hours between midnight and 5:00 a.m. because clearly what ails most of us is more than 5 hours worth of stuff to be delivered from. But, what’s great about the duration of hours – the often long waits for deliverance to joy – is that you release the idea of the magician with quick fixes and accept, exclusively lean on the love of the One who is Majesty, the only One who can deliver the morning time, the new day, the fresh start.

Yes, the weeping that lasts for a night, can last for many nights, weeks, years, even generations. It may seem that morning, the new and better day, may never come. But, it does, and it especially does if, while it’s nighttime, you trust God to reveal the stuff, walk with you, carry you, and keep watch on what He says to you as you call the mess out and deal with it, heal from it and forgive yourself (and others) for it.

And, if at every moment in the darkness of the night you’re going through, you can remind yourself that God understands your suffering and that He is supernaturally and mystically working on your behalf to ensure you live abundantly (richly, purposefully, and whole), then you can know without a doubt that weeping – pain, discomfort, distress, depression, you name it – may last for a long time, but rejoicing – joy, gladness, harvest, peace – does indeed come, show up, exist in the in the dawning of a new day.