The Night is His

Almost every night of this quarantine, I’ve crawled into bed, gathered the quilt all the way up to my face, gotten as cozy as possible, and lied awake for hours. I am a new victim of insomnia; I lie awake into the night, and if I do fall asleep, I consistently wake up every hour and have to fall asleep again. I’ve tried everything. I toss and turn on every side, try with the window open and closed, have been working out consistently, read before bed, try not to use my laptop or phone too close to going to sleep, and have done everything else I can think of. Still, I get little sleep and roll out of the bed for morning Zoom classes as exhausted as I got in it. Quite a few of my friends are struggling with the same thing, and they’re all just as confused as I am.

Sleep seems to be just one of the things I took for granted before quarantine, and now have to adjust to the lack of. Once eyelids are permanently weighted and brains have a constant fog about them, we realize how much we really need something so basic and so little thought of. It’s one of those basic “hierarchy of needs” things that can drastically affect mental and physical health.

This lack of sleep, though, has been the perfect time to pray, and to pray for things I would never otherwise think to pray for. What better time to pray than when the room is dark, the only noise is the sounds of the night, and we are weighed down by all the remaining worries from the day?

When I can’t sleep, I pray for someone else. The friend I live with has had similar struggles with sleep recently. As we sat across from each other late at night, she recalled how her mom used to tell her and her siblings that if they couldn’t fall asleep, to pray for someone; maybe there’s a reason they’re still awake. In fact, the one good night of sleep I can remember from the last few weeks is the night she told me that she had prayed I’d get a good night of sleep. Now, I’m a little less angry about being awake. Pray for someone you know can’t fall asleep. Pray for someone you checked on during the day, that they would wake in the morning with energy, endurance, and peace for the day. Pray for someone you know with depression and anxiety that may struggle with the long hours of night and the isolation they’ve been facing. Pray for someone with a loved one in the hospital who is awake worrying for their health. There’s usually someone awake at the same time you are, and there’s always someone who could use your prayer. As we attempt to steward our time well, it seems the time spent awake in bed would be better spent in prayer than in frustration.

Another seemingly random thing I often pray for is good dreams, for me and others. I learned this from a friend about a year ago, and was skeptical at first, but similar to my struggle with insomnia now, last year I started having nightmares almost every night, out of the blue. It’s something I didn’t think about until I woke up in a panic every morning when it was still dark out. I went through my days with the last night’s terrorizing memories in the back of my mind. I had never thought to pray for something so simple. It seemed childish, but I felt like a child. Every time I awoke from a nightmare (as an almost-adult for crying out loud) I felt weak and so easily shaken. My friend and I prayed for good dreams and good sleep. God cares even for these prayers. What a sweet picture of God’s children coming to him as just that: children (Jn. 1:12). I can imagine a young child kneeling by her bed, praying for the cares and worries of the day, and then praying for good dreams as she goes to sleep. A childlike faith isn’t too proud to humbly request a small thing. God didn’t have to give us dreams. We could have had nights of total unconscious sleep and an inactive mind, or of nightmares more often than most of us experience, but God gives good gifts to his children. What a sweet gift a good dream is.

The last prayer I pray is of turning the night and the next day over to him. Feel your frailty in those sleepless nights. We have so little control--so little that we can’t even get ourselves to fall asleep. Despite our lack of control, God is in control and preserves us still. The night is his. Just as we submit our plans during the days to him, we should submit to him even our nights.
No matter how much sleep I get at night, “I wake again, for the Lord sustained me” (Ps. 3:5). I am still functioning, and I am still here. God has sustained me. In our sleeplessness, God provides. There is always enough, we get through the day, and if we find ourselves awake again, we pray once more.

God can give us restful nights for us to awake refreshed, or in another sleepless night we can approach his throne and kneel as his humble children. When a small child tiptoes out of her room to ask her father for a glass of water, he gets her a drink, gives her a kiss, and sends her back to bed. She rests knowing she is safe with her father nearby. When a child crawls into his parents’ bed after a nightmare, the parents comfort him and let him know he is safe. He went to his parents knowing that they were comfort and security. Like the children we are, we hold out our requests in the middle of the night to a God who is the ultimate comfort and security. And like the Father he is, he listens, loves, and holds his children close.