In the Watches of the Night

I am not an easy bedfellow.

When my mind is not at ease, I rage in my struggle to fall asleep. The concerns of the day (real and imagined) grip me. Trying to shake them, I roll from my right shoulder to my left, then flat on my back, then back to my right. I creep closer to my wife, hoping her slumber is contagious; I turn away, attempting to change my luck once again.

If sleep does finally overtake me, it isn't long before my anxieties interrupt once more. I then get into full battle mode, cursing audibly the sleeplessness, punching my pillows into submission, rearranging, yanking the covers up, then off, fueling anxiety with anger, commanding my disobedient wretch of a brain to just fall asleep already.

I suppose the thoughts keeping me awake are not unlike those that keep you awake: uncertainty about the future, mistakes I've made through the day, anger, disappointment. Reliving all of game day was another common trigger for me. For whatever reason, these thoughts have a way of establishing a stronghold in my consciousness in the long hours of the night. And if I do luck into falling asleep in the midst of these, they are ready to enter my heart once again as soon as the alarm announces a new day. Typically, the negative has staying (and waking) power.

In the middle of a long spring of many sleepless nights strung together, I came across this from Psalm 63:

     My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
     and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
     when I remember you upon my bed,
     and meditate on you in the watches of the night (v. 5-6)

Rather than being kept awake by the earthly, the temporary, and the unpredictable, here is an offering to find satisfaction and joy by instead remembering the Source of all hope and goodness.

When I mess up, lose control, and say or do something that I regret, I can lie on my bed obsessed with the sin or the Forgiver of Sins. Angry over perceived wrongs, I can stay disappointed over flawed humanity or count on the One with a flawless track record since the beginning of time. I can be afraid of the temporal or comforted by the Eternal.

It doesn't seem like such a hard choice.

Oh God, may I remember You and meditate on you in the watches of the night.