Lord, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing.

Yesterday was Theo's last day of preschool. They had a very sweet "graduation" party in their garden where they sang, had gifts, cake, and took photos. It was adorable. The end of an era.

What caught me off guard was not that he is growing up. It is that I have to keep saying goodbye to him.

Not to Theo, he is right here, louder than ever. But to a particular version of Theo.

Preschool Theo is gone now, the one who used to run to demand 10+ hugs to say goodbye at drop off.

And he is not the first I have lost. The baby who couldn't walk, the toddler who called it "hoppital," all gone.

Soon, I will lose the Theo who can't read, and he'll no longer ask me to read bedtime stories to him. Each milestone he passes means saying goodbye to a version of him I had before.

It is a strange grief, because it arrives dressed as good news. He is not dying. He is becoming.

And that is exactly what David is pointing at when he writes, "You have turned my mourning into dancing."

With a child, the mourning and the dancing are the same moment. You can only grieve the boy he was because a better one is arriving in his place.

But I have to be careful here, because there is a grief my little goodbyes know nothing about.

When Theo leaves a stage behind, a new version of him walks in to take his place. That is the only reason I get to grieve him and celebrate him in the same breath. The dancing arrives in the same moment as the mourning.

That is not how it works when you lose someone for real.

When the person is gone, no better version walks in to fill the chair. The chair just stays empty.

You reach for the phone to tell them something, and then you remember.

There is only the sackcloth, and the weeping David knew long before he ever wrote about dancing.

But notice: David does not say, "I turned my mourning into dancing." He couldn't. No one can.

He says, "You have turned my mourning into dancing." God did it, and He did it after the night, not instead of it. David sat in the sackcloth first.

The God who turns mourning into dancing is in the sackcloth with you now. The turning is His work and His timing, not something you have to perform. Weeping may stay for the night. But only for the night.

And still, I don't want to stop grieving. Not the versions of Theo I have lost, and if it were a person, not them either.

Because grief is a receipt. A receipt I am proud of.

You only grieve what you loved, and I would rather carry the weight of having loved than travel light without it.

The day God lifts the sackcloth will not be the day I lose them, or the love. It will be the day the away is over.

So I do not have to choose. I can grieve and dance at the same time, and one day the dancing will be all that is left.