// DAY 10 // With the morning.
When I was about two years old, my parents gave me the best present – a baby brother. Boy, did I love (and still do love) that little brother of mine (he’s not so little anymore). He kicked me out of the crib and into the full-sized bed that still sits in my bedroom at my parents’ house, but somehow I figured out how to monkey-climb my way down the cool, iron bed frame onto a step stool and toddle my way into the nursery shortly after he was born. A little more monkey practice, and I was soon able to climb up into the crib with him and we’d spend the first few minutes of each morning giggling together while my parents listened through the baby monitor. I can’t imagine a more joyful way to start a day.
I also can’t remember the last time my morning involved any kind of gleeful giggling. Adulthood seems to zap all the fun out of waking up. Or maybe it’s just my alarm clock that does that. Either way, “joy” and “morning” are two words that are only associated with each other thanks to the Newsboys and a catchy tune (“Your Love Never Fails” – it’s one of my faves.). So even though I’ve read Psalm 30 countless times and was totally convinced that I knew verse 5 by heart, there was one little four-letter-word that I’m sure I never noticed before: with. Joy comes WITH the morning. Not in the morning. Does it make a difference?
It did yesterday, when my entire face was literally sore from all of the anxious tension I’d held in my jaw all day. I’m not really sure where all this stress came from…and as anyone with anxiety knows, sometimes the not-quite-being-able-to-name-it only gives you more anxiety. And honestly, what I’m about to share with you didn’t make my anxiety or my sore jaw magically disappear. But it did radically change the way I started a new day today.
Because if I tried to believe that joy comes IN the morning, there’d be a lot of days you’d find me bleary-eyed on my bed waiting in vain for Joy to come walking through the door. In one hand, she’d be carrying magic answers to all of my problems from the day before and in the other, there’d be a hand-lettered, fool-proof prescription for preventing trouble in the day ahead. I don’t know about you, but Joy has never once walked through my bedroom door like that.
More often than not, after a hard day or a hard week or maybe even a hard year, another morning arrives and it holds an email that informs me I made a mistake at work last week, and now one small typo is a really big problem. Or a reflection in the mirror that tells me I haven’t been getting enough sleep or washing my face the right way or working out enough. Or a text from a friend who feels neglected because I still haven’t responded to the message she sent me three days ago. I have many days when there is not joy in my morning – there is anxiety. Stress. Fear. Negative self-talk and a downward spiral of shame and shame about my shame.
But if I know that joy comes WITH the morning, sliding down the rays of sunlight as they peek through the slits of my blinds and slipping through the cracks in my heart still raw and exposed from the pain of the day before – well, that changes everything. Suddenly Joy is like a child whose eyes are wide open when I’d rather be fast asleep. She is that muffled, musical giggle that stirs me from my slumber as I roll over to find that she’s awakened her siblings, too. There they sit – Joy and Mercy and Steadfast Love, waiting eagerly to get the day started and begging me to come in and join their morning fun.
If joy comes WITH the morning, then I don’t have to wait for joy or create joy or find joy in the midst of my frazzled days. I simply receive it – a promised present for every new day, graciously carried on the wings of the dawn as they bear the weight of the rising sun again and again and again. I realize that daily joy, that glorious sunrise, the morning dew – they’re all part of a package deal that is offered to us anew every time we bravely open our eyes to another morning. Every day, these gifts are waiting for me, for you, for us – but will we notice them? Will we give thanks for them, a reciprocal offering of thanksgiving to the One whose mercies and steadfast love make this whole thing possible?
I don’t think it’s possible that gratitude gives us more gifts, but it sure can seem like it when my sacrifice of thanksgiving opens my eyes to a thousand little joys that I had forgotten about or missed or taken for granted. I can’t help but smile as I type that sentence, because I’ve only just realized how He’s brought it all full circle. This lesson of joy and gratitude and how they seem to be inextricably tangled up with each other in the best way…it is not a new one to me. And isn’t that just like God – to use the everyday moments of our right-now lives to remind us of heart-lessons we’ve managed to forget, while also using those same moments to teach us new things about His character and His Word and His deep, abiding love for us. This is grace upon grace, and we get to live right in the middle of it. We get to wake up every morning WITH joy, and the sure and certain promise that even if today leaves us weeping and crying out to God for help and healing, tomorrow will bring another morning and fresh, merciful joy along with it.
Praying that He helps of each of us lay hold of that joy.
with love and wanderlust,
Cassady
(P.S. – if you’re wondering what the “DAY 10” is about at the beginning of this post, head on over to my instagram account that’s associated with this blog. Just search @cassadyleeanne and it will pull right up! I’ve been working through the #write31days challenge this month, and would love for you to read more about it there!)