How many times have I called your name in the night?
Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Sixteen thousand, five hundred and fifty-two nights of my life so far and on how many of them have I said your name in frustration or grief or fear or pain?
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I’ve always been a bad sleeper. My mom says I slept through the night at six weeks old, but sometimes I wonder if that was the last time I slept consistently. I’ve had long bouts of insomnia since childhood, more than a decade of nights darkened with chronic pain in my twenties and thirties, and the pressure to sleep as a woman squarely entrenched in middle age. Sleep is the X on a map that’s missing its compass rose and arrow north. No matter how I turn the map, the legend fails me. I cannot find the proper path. The more I look for sleep, the more elusive it becomes.
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Why won’t you help me sleep? Why can’t my mind be still? Why these thoughts that race like a carousel of galloping horses? I just want to sleep, Lord, but I cannot bring about the rest you have promised. But did you promise it? Did I imagine the psalms that talk about love and sleep and peace? Am I beyond promises like that? Too far off the map? I say your name again and again, Lord, Lord, Lord. Will you remember your promises? I am afraid to hope in them, but I have to because I think you’re making me hope in them.
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I was in an upstairs guestroom of a house whose owner’s name I can’t remember. It’s not that I have such a bad memory, it’s just that there are so many bad nights I struggle to differentiate one night from the next. So I don’t remember her name, but I remember the white eyelet coverlet and the wicker end table. I remember sweating on top of the white covers, wrestling with sheets and anxiety. I remember the clock on the nightstand wasn’t telling time but rather ticking down to a detonation of facts: I never once slept all night, and I’d have to make it through a long, long day on a deficit I couldn’t bear. I cried actual tears that night.
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No sleep, no sleep, no sleep. Lord, I feel forgotten in a sea of wakefulness. I am drowning in mental vigilance. What good can come from running down the clock while the rest of the world rests? I can go nowhere but to you, so here I am again, again, again. But I just remembered—you’re awake, too.
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I was in my own bed, trying to settle my mind and body. My pain levels had ramped up a bit lately. Should I ask my doctor about a new treatment? I wondered. Maybe it’s just stress. Of course it’s stress, I remembered, thinking through the difficulties of recent months. I slipped out of bed and quietly made my way to the living room, careful not to wake my husband. His ability to fall asleep in three deep breaths amazes me. And sometimes, it infuriates me. I’ve asked him how he goes to sleep so quickly and looks at me like I’ve asked how he sees through his eyes. “I just sleep,” he says, confused by the question. Like, “I just see. I don’t even try.” I am convinced he’s holding out on me. There’s a secret and I don’t get to know it.
I pick up my Bible and the black spiral notebook from the basket on the coffee table. I open to the page in the notebook where I left off the night before and flip the Bible to 1 John. I start copying. Black ink on white lined paper. It’s the one activity that doesn’t wire my brain in the night but works to move the needle on my racing thoughts, those annoying mental hiccups I get stuck on. I copy Scripture, and though it doesn’t put me to sleep, it reminds me of true things when the noise of insomnia and pain block up my ears.
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I don’t know why you don’t intervene on nights like this, but I know you love me, because your word is telling me so right here in this spiral notebook. The words I’m copying say something different than the frustration burning a hole in my chest. So maybe you are intervening. Maybe this is your intervention. Why else would I be up in the predawn hours writing John’s letter into a notebook? I can think of nothing else that would drag me to your word in the night. You’re making me. You’re making me hope in your word. And tomorrow, it will look different. Somehow, it will look like mercy. Somehow, it will be true that you carried me in the night. Somehow, in my affliction of sleeplessness, your word will be my comfort.
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I keep calling his name in the night. In hotels, guestrooms, and my own bed. Sometimes I sleep like the dead, and sometimes I watch every minute of night drain into morning. Regardless, the Lord is there keeping watch. And somehow, there is blessing in calling out his name in the night. What other name would I call?
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Zayin
Remember your word to your servant,
in which you have made me hope.
This is my comfort in my affliction,
that your promise gives me life.
The insolent utterly deride me,
but I do not turn away from your law.
When I think of your rules from of old,
I take comfort, O Lord.
Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked,
who forsake your law.
Your statues have been my songs
in the house of my sojourning.
I remember your name in the night,
O Lord, and keep your law.
This blessing has fallen to me,
that I have kept your precepts.
Psalm 119:49-56
Author’s note:
This is the seventh essay in a series of reflections on Psalm 119. Each article bears the title of the stanza of the psalm from which it draws inspiration. This is 7 of 22.
Photo by Abdülkadir Vardi on Unsplash
