One of the simplest of all skills has evaded me for much of my adult life. One of those skills that most babies master in their earliest days seems to have mostly passed me by. One of the most basic of all talents has become my greatest battle.
I’m referring, of course, to sleep. Though I’m really good at falling asleep, I’m extremely poor at staying asleep. And, as I’m sure you’d agree, the staying is every bit as important as the falling! When night comes and bedtime draws near, I always face it with a mix of eagerness and dread—eagerness to get some rest but dread of waking up before I get enough rest. More often than not, I sleep for a time, then wake up in the wee hours—too tired to feel rested but too rested to fall back asleep. I often begin a new day discouraged, with my mind hazy and my brain sluggish. It’s a battle that has gone on for decades and one that is getting no better as I age. In fact, it could actually be getting worse.
I’ve long observed that insomnia is one of those afflictions that everyone else knows how to cure—everyone except the person experiencing it. Have you tried chamomile? Melatonin? Adjusting the temperature? Lowering the humidity? Cutting caffeine? White noise? The Calm app? Of course I have. I’ve tried all of that—I’ve tried the fringe and the mainstream and everything in between. None of it works for long or for good. Sleeping pills may work their magic, but that’s no long-term solution since they inevitably lead to a cycle of increased dosages providing diminished effect. So what to do?
In biographies, I’ve often noticed the connection between great men and short naps. Often those who accomplish the most are able to work until they are tired, then have a nap of twenty or thirty minutes and awaken feeling like a whole new man. That hasn’t proven an option for me. If I lay down for a half hour, I’ll spend the first 15 minutes in self-pity and the second in self-loathing. I’ll eventually give up and feel worse than I did when I began.
In Psalm 127, Solomon calls God’s people to labor with diligence, to expend their lives working toward those things that matter, for work is vain unless it is done for the Lord. “It is in vain that you rise up early / and go late to rest, / eating the bread of anxious toil.” And then he adds this: “for he gives to his beloved asleep.” And I wonder: But what about those times when he doesn’t give his beloved sleep?
I often think of all I could do if I wasn’t so tired so much of the time. I think of the extra capacity it would give me—the capacity to write more, read more, serve more, and do more. I think of how that kind of capacity is so close at hand, just an hour or two of sleep each night and my days would be transformed. Yet despite many prayers and much pleading, God has not seen fit to give it. I may go through brief phases when I sleep better, but a new bout of insomnia is never far away.
So I have decided I ought to receive this as God’s will—as a reality to be accepted rather than resented. After all, who am I to resist what God seems to have decreed? It is within his capacity to give me the sleep I crave. It would be no struggle for him to grant me a solid seven or eight hours each night. But that does not seem to be his plan for me. And so in this, as in so much else, I bow the knee to him.
As much as we always want God to strengthen us so we can do his will, he often chooses to weaken us so we can do his will.
That doesn’t mean I won’t keep praying and won’t keep trying—praying for sleep and trying to get better at it. That doesn’t mean I won’t try the next herbal concoction someone recommends as the one that changed their life. But it does mean that I won’t let myself feel like God doesn’t care about this or that it represents some kind of failure on my part. For I have long observed that as much as we always want God to strengthen us so we can do his will, he often chooses to weaken us so we can do his will. As he makes clear in his Word, his power is better displayed in human weakness than in human strength. And sometimes, I guess, that means in fatigue rather than in rest. Either way, it falls to me to trust that he loves, that he cares, and that he knows best.
