But Joy Comes with the Morning

I’ve never been one to fuss over home décor, which is why so many of the furnishings in our house are either hand-me-downs or thrift store purchases. But shortly after we moved into our home, I did buy a new half-round accent table that consisted of two separate pieces: a green marble semi-circular slab and a base with legs of carved wood.

The table was placed against the wall in an upstairs hallway, where it stood for the next 25 years. That is, until the morning that I got out of bed, walked into the hall, and found the table gone. Not repositioned or overturned or disassembled, but … gone.

The table had been there when I turned in the night before, so it had to have been moved sometime between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. But who had moved it? And where and why?

I went downstairs. There was the accent table, placed flush against the wall between two dining room doorways. There, too, was my husband Mike, looking critically at the new setup.

“I liked the table where it was before,” he mused.

“Then why did you move it?” I asked.

“I didn’t. Didn’t you?”

“No.”

A short time later, the kids thundered downstairs. “Hey kids, which one of you moved the table?”

“I didn’t.” “I don’t know.” “It wasn’t me.”

This was more than a little bit disturbing. Had someone entered our house during the night? And what kind of oddball would commit a felony for the chance to rearrange our furniture?

“Oh, wait….” My 15-year-old son Dominic, sitting with his eyes shut tight, was nodding slowly. “I think … I think I moved the table.”

All faces turned toward Dominic, who, it transpired, had been sleepwalking the night before. In that state, he had carried the marble slab and wooden base downstairs and reassembled the table in his chosen location in the dining room. Then, well satisfied with his decorating prowess, Dominic had gone back to bed.

For weeks afterward, I hardly slept at night, afraid that a sleepwalking Dominic might rewire the fuse box or get into the car and back down the driveway. Every sunrise brought with it the fear that, in the light of morning, something would be found to be eerily different from what it was the previous night.

Whether or not you have a sleepwalking family member prone to fiddling with your status quo, you can never know what a new day will bring. Overnight, governments can fall and power change hands; natural disasters can reshape the earth, obscuring the familiar; accidents, illnesses, and acts of violence can alter lives or take them; and fortunes can wax or wane with the moon.

“Weeping may linger for the night,” King David wrote, “but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

While odds are that you and I won’t always awaken to the reassuring sight of everything in its place, we can daily possess the joy of knowing that, come what may, God will be right there with us.

“Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day” (Psalm 46: 2-5).

By Celeste Behe, a parishioner of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, Hellertown. Find her online at www.CelesteBehe.com.