An emptied sleepless soul, I blink bleary-eyed into the blackness and stare at the dimmed numbers: 2:10 AM. I wonder when sleep will sooth the cinching in my back and soften the eyelids to rest finally. Coughs echo down from the upper floor and up from the lower floor. I lie on the couch sandwiched between 2 floors of coughing and long for solace to still my stirred-up, stressed-out mind.
I think about the white notecard on which I scrawled my stresses black ink. That was hours before the insomnia when peace and music seemed to fill me up full in the church service. I diagrammed my troubles in bubbles and lines like a giant spider web.
The clock blinks 3:26 AM. I want to go back to bed. The coughs are still coming from the family. A window creaks. I kick a blanket off and readjust the pillow.
The speaker said the stress map could turn into a prayer map. What an idea. I can't shake it, so I try it for a while. All I can focus on is the words I saw on the whiteboard in the service. I imagine the worst of everything for everyone on the whiteboard and the spider web on my card. I don't trust an empty mind in the middle of the night. Now the map seems to press on me even more than the hot weight of the blankets on this living room couch.
I see myself as I stood stiffly when I felt I should have walked up to the front and asked for prayer. I felt the muscle twinge in my back as I looked to the people lining up. I wanted to pray too. Pride and unworthiness spoke louder in my head than the Holy Spirit. I crumbled inward and stayed stuck in the moment.
So I think of solutions at 3:40 AM, hopeful ones. Hopeful ones for myself and my screwed up back. I google symptoms, remedies, clinics. I find a great one in Maine that does phone consultations for $300 an hour. Awesome. I shut off the phone.
More hacking coughs, but tapering, like popcorn in the microwave after two or three minutes. Maybe I should eat a snack. I drink a glass of water instead at the dark sink. I don't see the moon but it's reflection on the snow satiates me better than the drink. All blue and still.
I creep across the floor, careful not to squeak the floorboards under my socks. I lie down again. What if each thought and sound keeping me up, waking me here were not a barrier but a call to prayer? The twinge of back pain was a beacon of sorts, to call out to the One who is the ultimate resting place. So I do. I call out. Softly under my breath. One word after another. Peace. Rest. Names. Tasks. Days. Projects. Deep things. Small things. Big things.
I may have missed a chance to be prayed for, but I am awake now and I can pray for myself and others.
I can beat myself up for not listening to God's voice but a spinning mind only halts when we stop the spokes and listen.
Then one last hacking cough reverberates from below me. Silence. Minutes later, the house creaks into a good night settling.
I sneak back up to bed. I put my head on the pillow and listen to the One who whispers kindness and comfort and cares no matter the hour I turn my heart toward Him.
Every black-inked word turns requests and mortal reaching into a place of release and rest.
Let go the gripping, the cringing, the stressing because sleep comes, after the coughs settle, and it's sweeter, so much sweeter because I hear His voice instead of mine.
- Christina H.
