“Pay attention to the moon phase,” a girlfriend told me one evening with all of the hearkenings of someone who has endured the wildest river rapids and is calling down from upstream to warn me of the bumps to come.
We were neck-deep in 2020, drowning in our own kind of hard that had nothing at all to do with 2020 itself. It just happened to be the year in which our hardest days were taking place.
It had been four months since the words “autism spectrum” were first spoken when my world exploded into an entirely new kind of endless research, sleepless nights, and lots of crying on the kitchen floor. It’s not a story I’ve talked about a whole lot, mostly because it’s not mine to tell.
Also, I noticed very early on, while verbally processing with friends about this new world of neurodiversity, that the moment I said the word “autism,” whoever I was talking with would subconsciously glance over in my son’s direction. They didn’t even realize they were doing it, but I did. And I became very quickly aware of the stigma that comes with the word. The second it’s spoken, people suddenly see through autism lenses, to see if he fits into how they think autism looks. So, I haven’t shared much about this publicly. I’ve intentionally kept it, kept him, close to the cuff.
That said, there are always silver linings that God paints into the story we can’t ever see coming. Mine was in the form of a decade-long friendship with Sara, who raised a child like mine. She helped me navigate the new and unpredictable waters with late-night phone calls and SOS text messages from across the country, including that moon-phase conversation.
Her son’s behavior patterns were cyclical, she told me. You can usually predict the hardest days based on the moon phase.
I already knew where to start. They had just happened. moon phase
We had just started seeing a naturopathic chiropractor who begins treatment with a full, thermal scan of your spine to create an accurate digital image of the stress and tension that your nervous system is under. moon phase
You know the saying, “It will get worse before it gets better”? It absolutely did. When we first started adjustments, it was like kicking the hornet’s nest. I was still fresh off of the appointment where my four-year-old sat in the corner of the office with his hood up over his head in a near-fetal position, screaming and crying, refusing to be touched. I cried too, entirely helpless, desperate to help him.
The date was seared into my mind. It was the baseline that I used when I first started tracking the moon phase.
Back in Genesis, in the very beginning, after the vivifying and God’s Spirit hovering, after the light and the firmament and the waters, after the Earth and the seas and the grass and the trees, after all of that, on the fourth day, God made the sun and the moon. moon phase
“Let there be light-bearers,” God said in Genesis 1:14, “Let the sun, moon, and stars separate the day from the night. Let them be useful for signs, for tokens of My providential care, and for marking seasons, days, and years.” moon phase
Did you catch that? The primary purpose of the sun and the moon was for signs of His care and marking seasons. Providing light on the Earth was only ever secondary because He already provided the light. He is Light. moon phase
The Hebrew word for these Genesis 1:14 lights is maor. It’s rooted in ‘or, which is a primitive Hebrew word that means “to be or become light” or “to become bright.” ‘Or is used to describe the eyes of a faint person when she begins to recover—turning the corner on her darkest days, the morning of healing dawning. moon phase
“Or is also used to describe Jonathan’s countenance brightening after having a little bit of food in 1 Samuel 14:27-29. And you can find it in Isaiah’s 60:1 admonishment to get up from the depression and prostration in which circumstances have kept you. moon phase
“Rise to a new life,” the Amplified Bible reads. “Shine and be radiant with the glory of the Lord, for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you!” moon phase
‘Or is, quite literally, the or option in the darkest seasons. You can be depressed, overwhelmed, and beyond discouraged by the darkness that surrounds you. ‘Or, you can be refreshed. You can allow yourself to be made cheerful by His light shining suddenly in the way that He tends to do, as He tends to the ones that He loves so dearly.
That said, glance back again to Genesis 1:14. moon phase
“Let them be for a miraculous sign or a distinguishing mark,” God said, using the Hebrew word, ‘oth, that describes not only weather changes and seasonal shifts but also a sign of the hope to come, a reminder that, even in the darkness, you are not alone.
“The Lord Himself will give you an ‘oth-sign,” it says right there, in Isaiah 7:14, the words shining with resplendent hope and glittering light. “The virgin will conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name God-With-Us.”
The brightest sun on the warmest summer day? God is with you. moon phase
The barely-there hint of the tiniest moon sliver on the darkest night?
God is still with you.
So, yes, God made the lights for signs. But He also made them for season indicators (Hebrew word: moed). This refers to the four seasons that we know, yes, but also, originally, to indicate the time for God’s people to celebrate the seasonal feasts and festivals He would later introduce.
“The moed-beginning of months,” Numbers 10:10 says, introducing the new moon offerings.
It’s a fascinating detail because the full moon is the phase that gets the most attention. It’s when people are rumored to be the most out-of-sorts, when the emergency rooms tend to be the most full, and when women tend to go into labor in higher numbers. Naturopathic doctors are also familiar with the moon phases and their effects on their patients. Most notably, the full moon is when parasites are the most active. So, mentioning the moon phase during one of our son’s appointments brought up the possibility of a parasitic infection.
But our hardest days aren’t during the full moon. In our house, the hardest days are the ones surrounding the new moon, and that is a phase that most people are relatively unfamiliar with.
As for why the new moon is more difficult for us than the full moon, I don’t have a lot of answers. I’m a researcher to my core, and it’s very difficult to research moon phases and behavioral patterns without quickly getting into new age, pagan, and witchcraft articles. There just isn’t a whole lot of information out there about it (that I’ve been able to find) yet.
I want to fix this for him, and I can’t. As a patterns-driven researching doer, that’s a tough pill to swallow. But this is the explanation that I was able to piece together: My son is highly sensitive to sensory stimuli—sensory-avoiding as the professionals like to call it. Melatonin levels are at their lowest in your body during the full moon. You don’t sleep as well. Your brain is more active. With the new moon, it’s the opposite. Melatonin levels are at their highest. You’re much more tired.
All I know is that there is some sort of correlation between the melatonin levels and the way that my son’s brain responds to it. I tend to think he’s more irritable because he’s extra tired, but I’m just guessing, really.
There is so much about this that I don’t know. But the one thing that I do? It’s that God made the moon for the seasons (Psalm 104:19). And there, in that psalm, the moon is mentioned first because, in the Jewish day, the night leads the way. The year is divided into months and weeks by the waxing and waning of the moon. And it was by that same waxing and waning that the exact dates of the Jewish holy days were arranged.*
God intentionally designed a new month to begin with a brand new moon, which, incidentally, looks like no moon. It’s the side of the moon that’s not illuminated by the sun and blends in seamlessly with the night sky. That’s where He put the emphasis, not on full moon offerings—on new moon offerings. That’s where He instilled a habit of worship and praise—when the nights were consistently the darkest.
It’s at the beginning of the new moon in Genesis 8:5 when Noah poked his head out of the ark and strained his eyes to see the tops of the mountains after ten months of nothing but rain and water and clouds and darkness. It was under the nearly imperceptible new moon that the sliver of hope peeked over the tops of the flood-waters that had threatened to drown him.
Then there’s Exodus 12 when God dedicated that month as the Jews’ beginning of months. The new moon of new moons, if you will. In their darkest days, after 400 years of slavery and weeks of plagues, God whispered hope and instituted Passover.
In ancient Jewish culture, the beginning of the month was announced by the testimony of messengers whose only job was to watch for the first visible appearance of the new moon. As soon as the first sliver was seen, it was heralded throughout the whole country by signal fires on the mountaintops and blowing trumpets. (The Hebrew word for “month” (hodesh) literally means “new moon.”)*
Numbers 10:10 and Psalm 81:1-4 both describe the new moon offerings with trumpets blowing as a signal to gather together, calling it a day of gladness—celebratory, even.
Do you know what that tells me? Hold the feast. Invite His light. Celebrate the gladness to come even if it’s not yet here. Do it all while it’s still just a sliver of hope. Cling to it. Praise Him for it. Better days are coming. It’s a jaw-dropping reminder to intentionally turn my heart and my mind toward worship in the middle of my darkest days. Look for the silver lining, and worship God for the miracle to come. Because light is coming. Morning will dawn.
I take another glance at the moed-seasons of Genesis 1:14. I see that it means an appointed time or place, a meeting. The word is rooted in another, ya-ad, which is very similar in meaning—meeting with someone at a specifically appointed time and place. As I read the words, I felt God whisper.
“Meet with Me here, at this time, on your darkest day. Come to Me. Turn your face toward Me. It’s a long-standing, open-ended appointment. I’ll be here waiting.”
***
I had just pointed my car south, on the way to pick my son up from preschool and in the height of another series of rough moon phase days, when I saw it. The sky was clear, save one giant cloud that stretched the expanse of it.
I just finished yelling my frustration to God in my otherwise empty car. I’d seen the moon phase coming for a week, and I had no idea how to make it better for him. I wanted to soften the blow somehow. God showed me the pattern of his hardest days. Surely He could also tell me how to fix it, right?
As my car turned, the cloud greeted me. It was in the shape of a giant, rolling wave.
Wrap yourself around him, I felt God whisper. Roll through it with him.
how to track the moon phase
If you’re curious about tracking the moon phase, too, just open the weather app on your phone. The moon phase is included at the very bottom: