Weeping and Rejoicing
 by Elita Sohmer Clayman

Weeping may remain in the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. What a lovely phrase, line, saying or whatever you want to name it. I heard this on my soap opera the other day and say what you may about soap operas, they come up with some excellent expressions among the sexual and provocative story lines. This is from the Book of Psalms.

How can we as mortals explain this saying? I think it this way. Many times we have sadness and it seems to escalate in the evening hours. Sometimes in the early morning when we awaken and are refreshed from our sleep, we take time out to rejoice in our blessings.

Many people on their answering machines will end their message to the caller with have a blessed day. That is particularly relevant in this rush rush society we live in. Times now are tough for many people without jobs or losing their homes etc. So we who are blessed with having these things can look upon ourselves as being particularly favored and fortunate in our good happenings.

I myself some days wake up and think "this will be a special day." For no reason I can think that and I sit down at my office desk in my home where I write these articles for magazines and online websites and blogs and write a list of my blessed things that we all take for granted. I also write down what pleasant things I wish to happen today. Pleasant can only be maybe receiving a package I have waited for and it can mean going to get my hair done. It can mean writing a new and inspiring article for my dance or Weight Watchers site or blog. It can mean getting a good report about a test I may have taken for medical reasons. It can mean thinking about going back to my ballroom dancing and maybe competing next year with my professional coach.

It could mean going to see my grandchildren in Northern Virginia or taking my two older grandsons, age fourteen and seventeen to dinner, my husband and me and enjoying their teenage talk and happy times.

So lists can be important in making the day happy and anticipating a good many hours. My friend Francine known to all of us from teen days as Frannie says that a good day for her is a day without her arthritic pains in her many joints. On pain free days, this is her blessing. My friend Nina says a good day is just being off from work. My dear friend John Scott says a good day for him besides being off is playing around in his garden of flowers at his home back yard. He says it gives him peace and quiet because the neighbors are all at work and since he works weekends this is his solitude and happiness watching his flowers prosper. He gave my husband and me each for our birthdays a plant and we planted them in our patch of dirt alongside of the walkway into the front of the house. We call it our John Garden Path and as they blossom and develop this becomes a living birthday gift for years to come. It is better than a bunch of flowers from the florist or grocery store that passes on after a few days and is thrown in the garbage can. These planted plants are living reminders of our gifts from a friend or relative and even in the cold and wintery days to come upon us in a few months, the green of the plant shows us that spring will come and it will blossom anew.

So if there is weeping in the night, then certainly we shall rejoice in the a.m. hours when we count our blessings, anticipate our good happenings for that day and even look at our planted plant for our birthday gift. Good friends and delightful family members are what we have to rejoice about and if we can feel the happiness and celebrate and revel in these moments then we are surely having a blessed day. That day will be remembered when maybe something goes wrong on another day.

Even having a wonderful and caring medical person in your life helping you cope with illness or checkups can be called an example of blessed moments. My husband and I are blessed with one and his name is Dennis H. Myers, here in Baltimore, Maryland where we reside. He is a physician assistant and he knows so much more than many medical doctors. He takes care of us in the office and many times on the phone or email and helps us in many ways as we are now senior citizens. He is kind, caring, compassionate and most of all a dear friend. He became one to us four years ago when we switched doctors and we both feel blessed in being in his practice and in his presence. Our lives are really enhanced with having him take care of us. We feel that not only are we in good ‘hands’ we have excellent emotional support from his deep feelings for his patients. That is also a blessing to be content with and to rejoice not only in the mornings but in the evenings too.

Little almost four year old Ethan told Grammie ( me) that the shoe was lost when he saw a ceramic shoe sitting on my foyer table when he was here from Virginia in January 2009. The shoe was an ornament but to Ethan it was a ‘lost’ shoe and he probably wondered where the other one was. So in his young and brilliant mind, he sought to designate it as lost. In reality it was the shining example of a not lost shoe, it was there for decoration and had found a home of its own.

To Ethan he knew that lost was not a good thing, he was trying to sort out that the lost shoe maybe was found.

Found we are when we can interpret our happiness with even simple and plain things like ornaments, plants and lists. We have found our self when we contemplate being peaceful and happy with what we have and hoping maybe when we can afford it to have some more peaceful items. Even painting a wall a different color in for instance the living room or dining room or adding a framed family picture or a bought picture from the store can bring us peace.

Dear friends of mine via the email and reading my dance columns in dance magazines made for me two glass paintings. They painted on thick glass with acrylic type paint pictures of dancers dancing the waltz and the samba in 2004 and shipped them to me along with special hooks to hang them. They appear in a place of honor on my living room wall and every week when I dust them off during cleaning time, I rejoice in their friendship via the email though we have never met in person.

So peace and tranquility and rejoicing can be had in many ways. Alexia and Antonio Cardenas from California did this for me and when it arrived in a special delivery from a delivery service I felt quite blessed. They appreciated my inspiring dance articles and rewarded me with these special and unusual dance glass paintings. I get extreme joy when I look at them as I walk by ten times a day in the house.

I have gone to Weight Watchers and I have lost over sixty-two pounds adhering to their beliefs, ideas and have been very successful in this feat for over six months now. I give honor to the leader of my particular class Donna Weitz for inspiring me and leading me down this new path of slimness and good health. Her leadership qualities place her too in my list of happiness. I rejoice in knowing her and to be the recipient of her wise and encouraging Weight Watchers lectures each Monday night.

So the plant in John’s Garden Path to the Cardenas wall in my house, to little Ethan and the ceramic shoe and to all blessed days having Dennis and Donna in our lives, I rejoice and I am happy in the morning and all day and night too. This is my moment of beauty in a tiring day and this is my peace for my soul and heart. The evenings and the mornings are delightful things and this is what life is all about. My lists include John, Alexia and Antonio, little Ethan, sister Ava and his mom and dad, and of course Dennis and Donna.

These are our good memories and the book of Psalms says it right.

Weeping may remain in the night, but rejoicing surely comes in the morning and may I so boldly add it comes in all day long too.

Elita Sohmer Clayman

Keep on Dancing

You can email me at elitajerrydancing@verizon.net

September 2009