When will it end? The darkness seemed suffocating and in the thick of it I felt blinded to anything but hurt. It was a familiar season in my life. Trauma and tragedy were becoming all too often reoccurring and I felt like I was drowning. Each time, the blow knocking me down a little further.

Joy was supposed to come in the morning. God was supposed to turn my weeping into dancing...but there I was, gasping for breath with no relief to my tired bones and aching heart.

Been there? Fumbling around this lightless land of grief and sorrow? That is the night. In the night, things are unfamiliar and scary. Small sounds seem magnified and our loneliness aches deep. We feel isolated...abandoned. "Weeping may endure for the night" I was expecting my immediate joy in the morning, but if you've ever been anywhere at night, you know it lasts a while.

In my devotion this morning she spoke of the sunrise being gradual and I was like YES! That is the grief walk. A gradual rebirth into joy and hope. The night falls and it's heavy. We're confused and desperate, but never truly alone. My weeping was heard. My tears were caught. We expect this easy life from pain, but that's just not reality. Pain comes to everyone. No one is exempt from night, but we all the have the hope of the sunrise.

Slowly small glimmers of light start peeking over the horizon. What once seemed ominous and terrifying is bathed in light and softened. We slowly see some familiarity and the anxiety settles. We begin to navigate the world around us again. Everything isn't sunshiny and bright all at once. It's a gradual bathing of hope and restoration until the day that we breathe in and realized the air went a little deeper into our lungs and our heart beats seem a little less shaky. Then, a new hope is born. The light is shining at it's peak, covering us in redemption from the terror we experienced in the night.

Just like a child, it's in those "I'm afraid of the dark," pitch black moments at night that I just want to be held. That I'm calling out desperately and God's hands swoop me up and carry me as He slowly floods me with the light of morning. Then, at the break of day...with a new mission in my heart, He says go. He's turned my mess into a message. The sunrise. My "joy in the morning."

We don't just arrive at joy. We have to journey there.

And just as the coming of morning doesn't stop the night from existing, neither does new hope and joy wipe away the things that happened to you. You're just able to navigate them and use them for a greater purpose...for something that fills you and glorifies the one who brings the sunrise!

For those still in the midst of your darkest night, you are not alone. I'm here on the other side to guide you. It's my mission to make your dark road a little easier travel. I believe it's the duty of those who've been there before. Rest, give yourself grace, pour out your anguish, and open your heart to be filled with joy again. It won't happen instantly, but start watching for those first signs of sunrise. Those tiny glimmers of newness. <3

....until we can dance together in the light of the sun with our eyes fixed on eternity where our true hope lies knowing we've conquered the darkness that tried to swallow us. I promise, that day will come.

"You make known to me the path of life;

you will fill me with joy in your presence,

with eternal pleasures at your right hand."

-Psalm 16:11