A Little Sleep, A Little Slumber

Sleep and slumber. If only these two were my friends these days. I've not had a good night's sleep in weeks. It's one of those glorious things I took for granted as a teenager who had the ability to sleep a straight 8-10 hours like a corpse and who could nap in the afternoon alongside her many cats. Now, as an adult, sleep is an indulgence, an occasional decadent pleasure. I am so thankful for those nights I get to sleep all the way through without assistance. For those of you for whom sleep is an easy task, you have a treasure indeed!

But I've found that those nights when I'm lying awake, or tossing and turning, or I simply wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, those are the times when I have the best heart-to-hearts with the Father. Sometimes I feel as if He is waking me up just for me to talk to Him. It's those times, in the dark quiet of the night, when my heart is most laid bare before the One who searches it and knows it best. So although I am weary in body many days, I am thankful for those times of whispered prayers from a heart stripped of all its distractions, from weary but earnest lips, while enfolded in the presence of the Lover of my soul, whose lovingkindness is better than life...and sleep!

Psalm 139: 1-6, 17-18

"O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it...How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You."