The First Glimpse of Light

We are near the end of this journey, and something wants to be said carefully here: the light you are beginning to see — if you are beginning to see it — does not erase what came before it. The morning does not invalidate the night.

Grief does not resolve cleanly. It does not end on a specific day with a closing ceremony. For many people, the grief simply begins to change shape — it becomes less like an ocean that drowns and more like a tide that comes and goes. The joy that begins to return is not a replacement for what was lost. It is something that has learned to coexist with the loss.

Psalm 30:5 says that joy 'cometh in the morning' — not that the night was a mistake, not that the weeping was unnecessary, not that you should have moved faster. The night was real. The weeping was real. And the morning comes anyway, in its time, in its way.

If you are beginning to feel the first hints of morning — a lightening, a moment of laughter that surprised you, an hour when the grief lifted enough to breathe — receive it without guilt. You are not being disloyal to your loss by experiencing relief. You are being human.

And if you are not feeling that yet — if it still feels like the middle of the night — that is also allowed. The morning does not come on command. It comes in God's time.

Either way, it is coming. That is not a platitude. It is a promise from the One who made both the night and the morning.