This night feels so long. The tears won't stop. Will this heaviness ever lift?

In the middle of a long night it stops feeling like night and starts feeling permanent. David wrote from the other side of one — weeping given its hour, and joy given its own. The night was never the whole measure. Morning keeps its appointment.

The conversation

The child: “Daddy God, this night feels so long. The tears won't stop. Will this heaviness ever lift?”

God: “It will. David knew this darkness. He wept through nights just like this one. And he wrote something that has carried people through every dark hour since.”

The child: “What did he write?”

God: “'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' Not joy might come. Joy cometh. It's on its way. It's already walking toward you.”

God: “Notice he said 'endure for a night.' Not endure forever. Not endure without end. A night. Nights are real. But they're also temporary. Every single one ends.”

The child: “But when you're in the night, it feels like it will never end.”

God: “That's the lie the darkness tells you. It says 'this is permanent.' But the morning has never once failed to come. Not once in the history of the world.”

God: “And he didn't say the weeping was wrong. 'Weeping may endure.' May. It's allowed. The tears are real and they matter. I collect every one.”

The child: “You don't want me to stop crying?”

God: “I want you to cry if you need to. But I also want you to know: the weeping is the night's work. The joy is the morning's. Both are coming. Right now you're in the night. That's okay.”

The child: “So the joy isn't something I have to find. It's something that comes to me.”

God: “It cometh. Like sunrise. You don't make the sun rise. You don't earn it. You don't chase it down. It comes because that's what mornings do.”

The child: “Then I'll hold on through this night. Because morning is coming.”

God: “It is. And I'll be sitting right here with you until the first light breaks.”

"For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Psalm 30:5, KJV