My life has been consumed with sleepless nights.
Spiritual Warfare, meeting satan’s minions head on, as a
child, in the dark, at night.
I have fought for years, trying to find the perfect rest of
God’s peace. I still fight, as I write this at 3am, struggling to sleep. My
mind wanders into places of hope and love, trying to find the peace, but I am
awake with a vengeance, my body aches with restless motion.
Terror struck me in the dark, and I fought. Alone and
wondering how to escape the realities of the nightmares, awake… in an unaided battlefield,
no one taught me how to overcome.
Then I grew up, became a woman, a wife and a mother… and the
sleepless nights persisted with a fiery, as I refused to allow my children to
fight the same cold battle alone. So I walked the night in my home, praying and
wrestling with the fear and anxiety the followed since childhood.
Still, more terror… 3:30 visitations from workers of
darkness surround my home and I stay awake to battle. Not knowing the perfect rest
that come from peace in my God, because I did not fully trust Him. I lay in
bed, jumping at every sound and creak, every whimper my children made in the
restful slumber. I suffer silently in the dark, fighting for peace.
The weight presses in and depression finds its way, but
still I fight. I will not give into the terror, the fear of the unknown. Then
my grandma and mom die in the same year and sorrow overshadows all of the joys
and fears I possess. Not long after my father dies and sorrow looms a little
longer. My exhausted body carrying the evidence of sleepless nights in physical
weight, I struggle to lose. And then I break. My entire existence falls to the
ground, like a tree struck by lightning, and a monstrous thud reverberates
through my life.
I am a stump, a heap of broken flesh, on the ground, at the
bottom. Nowhere to go, no more fight in me. I am shattered and torn from the
life giving roots that sustain me. I cannot function and my life is consumed
with sleep. I can barely move, my body is drained from life and all I can do is
sleep to escape the pain of a childhood that stole my rest, in a place where I
was not safe.
But the stump was not dead and in my rest, new life began to
grow. New hope began to show and sprouts of joy overtook the stump until it was
covered in growth. I was born again, into a place of healing and peace that I
had never experienced before. I delighted in the reality that I could sleep,
through the night, rest.
It was a time of bliss and wonder as fear no longer
inhabited my life and anxiety fled from my atmosphere. But like most things in
life, it was a season. A season I am afraid has ended, as my sleepless night
persist again.
But all hope is not lost. In my sleepless phenomenon, I
still have peace. I still experience rest. It is not that which my physical
body benefits from, but my soul and spirit are at peace. I am finding a new
understanding and definition of rest in these “new growth” sleepless nights. I
find they are consumed with prayer, study, research, dreaming, hope and worship.
Even on this sleepless night, I sit her, in the mountains, surrounded by God’s
handiwork, listening to Julie True’s Healing Soaking music and reading Psalm
139…. And I am embracing rest. I resist the temptation to force myself to sleep
and get up to find the rest. I am making every effort to enter into rest,
Hebrews 4, so that I can experience the fullness of God’s glory.
So… I sit back, drink my Sleepytime Tea, and try to find the
rest in the midst of my sleepless night. Knowing that there is purpose in it,
knowing that “the darkness shall not hide from Him, that the night shines as
the day; because the darkness and light are both alike to YOU,” Oh God.
