The Morning After the Longest Night

In January 2010, Stephanie Decker of Henryville, Indiana, heard the freight-train roar every Midwesterner dreads. She threw herself over her two children in the basement as an EF4 tornado peeled their home apart board by board. A steel beam crushed both her legs. She lost them both below the knee.

For months, Stephanie lay in a hospital bed staring at a ceiling, convinced her life as she knew it was over. The nights were brutal — phantom pain, grief for the body she had lost, the terrifying question of whether she would ever stand on her own again. She told reporters she begged God just to let the darkness pass.

Then the morning came. Not all at once, but in stubborn increments. First steps on prosthetics. Then a walk across the room. Then a run. Within two years, Stephanie was skiing. She founded a nonprofit to help children affected by disasters, turning the worst night of her life into a doorway for compassion she never knew she carried.

The psalmist David knew this rhythm in his bones. "Weeping may stay for the night," he wrote, "but rejoicing comes in the morning." Psalm 30 is not a denial of suffering — it is a testimony from the other side of it. The Almighty does not promise us a life without dark nights. He promises that He is faithful enough to bring the morning. And when it comes, our mourning is turned to dancing — not because the scars disappear, but because the One who heals gives us new legs to stand on.