The Nights Are the Worst of It

Daylight is manageable.

There's work in it, and people, and things that have to get done, and a man can put his hands on a task and be fine for nine hours. Daylight has a job for him.

Then everybody goes to bed.

And he's lying there at two in the morning looking at a ceiling he knows by heart, and there's no task, no meeting, nobody to be steady for. Just him and the ledger. Everything he's done. Everything he didn't. The years he can't get back and the man he told himself he'd be by now.

If that's your two in the morning, you should know something right away. You are not the only man awake right now doing that math. Not by a long way. Men are lying in the dark all over this country tonight, in houses that look completely fine from the road, believing they're the only one.

**And if tonight the math is going somewhere darker than tired, stop and make a call before you read another word. Dial or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you served, dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255, or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net. You don't have to be enrolled in VA benefits or health care to connect.** People answer. That's the entire job. You do not have to be in danger tonight to deserve the call.

Here's what makes the nights different, and it's worth naming so it has less power over you.

The dark takes away every job you use to prove you're worth something.

All day you're the guy who fixes it, the guy who shows up, the guy carrying it. That's not nothing, but if it's the whole of what you're standing on, then at two in the morning you're standing on nothing at all, because none of it is available. No work to do. Nobody to be strong for. Just you, without the props.

And a man's own head is a hostile witness at that hour. It will not remind you of one thing you did right. It has an excellent memory for the other file.

And some of what's in that ledger is not a character problem. It's an injury.

If you served, you already know there are two different things men carry home. One is a body still fighting a war that ended. The jumpiness, the nightmares, the flinch at a sound that means nothing. The other one is quieter and heavier. It's a conscience carrying what you did, or saw, or could not stop, and the certainty that it has put you outside what God forgives.

Those are two different wounds and they do not take the same words. Neither one is a faith deficit. A man can love God with everything in him and still wake up on the floor at three in the morning. Getting help for either one, the VA, a counselor, a chaplain, your elders, is not a failure of faith. It is treatment for an injury, the same as a shattered leg is.

So the question isn't how to think better thoughts at 2am. You can't. Nobody can.

The question is what's underneath you when the props are gone.

> The LORD is near to the brokenhearted > And saves those who are crushed in spirit. > > Psalm 34:18

Read what that says, and read what it doesn't.

It doesn't say He's near to men who have it together. It doesn't say He shows up once you've prayed your way back to a decent mood. Brokenhearted. Crushed in spirit. Those are the words God chose for the men He's closest to, and if you meet the description tonight, you are not outside His attention. You are the one He named.

He is not near because you're doing well. He is near to the crushed, and He does not require you to stop being crushed before He comes.

That's the thing to hold at two in the morning, when nothing feels true. Nearness isn't a feeling you have to generate. It's a fact about where He is, and it holds while you can't feel a thing.

And I won't tell you it lifts by morning, because the psalm doesn't. Read one verse further and it says the afflictions of the righteous are many, and that the LORD delivers him out of them all. Many, and all. Both are in there, and it never puts a date on the second one. So the promise is not that tonight is your last bad night. The promise is that He is near in it, and that He does not lose the men He is near to.

And if you just disqualified yourself from the word righteous, stop. In that psalm the righteous are the ones who take refuge in Him. Not the ones who are doing well.

And hear this, because a man in the dark gets it exactly backwards. The verdict your head is handing down at two in the morning is not the truest thing about your life. It's the loudest thing, at the worst hour, with none of your defenses up. Two in the morning is a bad judge and it should not get to sentence your whole life.

But do not hear me saying the pain isn't real. It is real, and it is information. The verdict is a liar. The hurt underneath it is telling the truth, and it is telling you something needs attention that it has not been getting. Do not talk yourself out of that part. That part is why you tell somebody.

The night itself ends. That part is literal, and it is worth holding onto at three in the morning. You have never once been in a night that didn't.

So here's what to do, and it isn't a mindset.

**Tell one person that the nights are bad.** One. Your wife, a brother from church, a friend who'd pick up. You do not need to have language for all of it. "The nights have been bad lately" is a complete sentence and it is enough to start.

Say it in daylight, when it's easier to speak, and say it before you need to.

And if you're carrying more than that, if what's happening at two in the morning is that some part of you wants out, then that is exactly the thing you tell somebody today, out loud, and you call 988. Not tomorrow, not when it gets worse. There is no bar you have to clear to deserve help, and there is nothing noble about carrying this alone. Men die of privacy.

One more thing, and it's practical. If there's a firearm in the house and the nights have been like this, put some distance between you and it for a while. Let a brother hold it, or lock it and let someone else keep the key. Distance and time save lives, and this is temporary, for the same reason you hand your keys to somebody when you have had too much.

I'm not writing this to fix you in one sitting. I'm writing it so you know the man in the dark is not alone in there, and that God is nearer to him than he can feel.

Get through tonight. If tonight is bad, you don't wait for morning to say so.

**988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call, text, or chat. Veterans, dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255.** Somebody is awake right now for exactly this.