I was reading hurriedly, which is too often my style, but that didn’t hinder the critical aspect of my reading. There it was… sleep-stealer. What a mistake…. but when I read again, it was no mistake; it was not meant to be sheep-stealer. The writer was talking about nights when our sleep is stolen by all sorts of uncontrollable invaders…sleep-stealers.
Is anything more important than sleep? We spend sizeable portions of our life asleep — the child one/half its time, the adult one/third, while the elderly does little else but eat and sleep. The ability to sleep is a blessing without price, while prolonged insomnia can wreck the nervous system and severely alter the disposition.
This issue of sleep is fresh for me because I recently went through a couple of weeks of not sleeping well, many nights spending as much time awake as asleep. I have learned that sleep is never more appreciated than when it eludes us. That’s the reason the term sleep-stealers got my attention.
In reflection, I have concluded that concern for unresolved issues of the day is the dynamic in which the sleep-stealers do their most effective work. There is a paradox here. Spending a brief time rehearsing the events of the day may be a positive aspect of our praying before-going-to-sleep. Yet, it can also be a time that sends us into emotional, sleepless turmoil as we spend time rationalizing:
Why did I do that?
Why did I respond in that fashion?
How could that person have been so insensitive?
How can I make up for my failure?
We can wrestle with sleep-stealers— not by reliving the problems we were not able to solve, not by emotionally anticipating the problems that may await us tomorrow— but by recognizing that sleep is a gift, a gift from God. One little verse in Psalm 127 expresses it
In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep to those he loves.
The entire Psalm 127 is the affirmation of the essential dynamics of God in the building of the city, the community life of people, and especially the family. The core concern is trust, the overcoming of anxiety. For the person who trusts in the Almighty, sleep is a gift. We do not achieve sleep, we receive it. The Latin root for the word “sleep” is labi, which means “to glide or slide”. We do play some small part in composing ourselves for sleep. We may refuse to drink coffee after 7 p.m., and abstain from eating too heavy a meal. In a pinch, we might even be found taking a pill to induce sleep. Frequently we count sheep, or try to paint scenes of restful beauty on the insides of our eyelids, but essentially sleep is of God. It’s not something we achieve, but something we receive from him.
In the closet where we prepare for bed, my wife, Jerry, has hung a small placard, Don’t count sheep…Talk to the Shepherd. I’m practicing that in my battle with the sleep-stealer. My battle is not struggling but surrendering. It is in rehearsing my day in the presence of God, and, in trust, waiting for the gift of sleep to be given.