Three Ideas For Sleepless Nights
“On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
I cling to you;
your right hand upholds me.”—Ps. 63:6-8 (ESV)
In my last post, we focused on the importance of maintaining physical rest on a daily basis as a key way to set our restful rhythms. But then inevitably, the question arises: what if that doesn’t happen? What if
My baby needs a middle of the night feeding?
My young children struggle to sleep?
My aging parents need to be checked at 2 a.m.?
My work schedule constantly shifts between day and night?
I suffer from chronic illness and pain that keeps me from sleep?
One of the side effects of my medications is sleeplessness?
I am anxious about a relational difficulty that won’t go away?
All these issues are not because we are not trying to sleep. Even if are diligent about getting to bed on time, there could be dread in the pit of our stomachs, knowing that it won’t last long.
Even if you do not struggle with sleeplessness in general, there will be seasons of it. We struggle to fall asleep or even if we do, we wake up anxious in the wee hours, with our minds whirling. If this happens even for a week or two, it still has negative consequences. What do we do then? Does that mean God does not care for us?
God Loves The Sleepless Too
Sleeplessness is clearly not a modern-day issue. The Bible, in all its realism, knows that this is an issue, regardless of the cause. It seems like even the great king of Israel, David, had his share of sleepless nights! (See Ps. 63:6 above.)
In Psalm 56:8, David also says, “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” Here, we can see David’s mind wandering around at night, tossing and turning, crying himself to sleep.
God, because He is God, does not slumber or sleep. It is to this God that David turns. Yes, we can try setting a good bedtime routine. We can make arrangements for support from others. We can do all we can, but all these solutions will have their limits.
Sometimes we follow that routine faithfully. But we still lie awake. Sometimes we have the help. But that doesn’t stop us from settling down to get the sleep we need. They are not sure-fire sources of sleep.
Therefore, sleep is not necessarily synonymous with rest. I have had times when I have slept through the night uninterrupted but do not feel any more rested.
This is because rest is not merely a state of the body. It is a state of the soul. And what Jesus promises in Matt. 11:29 is rest for the soul, not necessarily sleep.
So while we can do all we can to physically prepare our bodies for rest—and that’s important—we cannot expect them to always work. God does not owe us a good night of sleep. It is a gift He bestows (Ps. 127:2).
One of the first ways to find this spiritual rest for our souls is to remember the truth of God’s sovereignty. If I am in a season of sleeplessness, instead of jumping to the conclusion that God doesn’t love me, I can flip it on its head and remember that even in my insomnia, God does love me. He has good and loving purposes for my sleeplessness.
That may be a hard sell when your brain is fuzzy, but it’s possible. David tells us in Psalm 63:6 that he turns his mind to remember God while on his bed. Psalm 56:8 is a prayer to God; he is talking to Him. Psalm 4:4 tells us to “Tremble and do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.”
In each of these, David is connected to God, even in his sleeplessness. Sometimes he meditates on His nature. Sometimes he laments. And sometimes he confesses the sin and regrets that haunt him.
In any case, with you on those sleepless nights is a loving God. Whether He blesses you with sleep or not, He loves you. Nothing, not even a sleepless night, can separate us from the love of God through Christ (Rom. 8:38-39).
Practical Helps When You Are Sleepless
Finding your rest in God alone may help you to find the strength you need to serve faithfully the next day. When we recognize that what gives us strength is the Lord Himself, not how many hours of sleep we clocked the night before, we can find ourselves able to carry out the responsibilities we have. The joy of the Lord becomes our strength (Neh. 8:10).
With that said, however, it is not wrong to find support in these hard seasons. Here are some ideas to consider.
1. Find someone who can support you while you get some sleep.
This was especially helpful for me when I was a new mother. My firstborn didn’t much like to sleep at night. I would dread going to bed each evening, knowing that it wouldn’t last.
Thankfully, I had support through friends and my mother-in-law. Each of them would take a night for me (of course, she slept like an angel for them!). This helped me to catch up on sleep until she was able to sleep through the night (and became my best sleeper!).
2. Train your children to sleep.
Sometimes it’s not that we cannot sleep but our children cannot. While I recognize this is a controversial topic in parenting circles, I’d encourage at least the consideration of the beliefs behind your issue.
Before we can help our children, however, I’d like to pose a question: Is it entirely up to you to help your children sleep? Could it be that their sleeplessness might be a discipleship opportunity? How can their sleeplessness help them to find their peace and rest in God, not me?
Just as God is the one who blesses us with rest when we turn to Him, so He is for our children as well. At the risk of sounding simplistic, I’d like to just ask the question: could it be that He is also inviting them to get to know Him? If so, then our role in this situation is not to be God for them but to point them to God.
To do this, it may help to try to pinpoint the nature of your child’s sleeplessness. Is it nightmares? fears? influences during their waking hours that replay at night? Instead of merely focusing on the issue of getting them to sleep no matter what, take a moment to discern other possible issues. These can provide another pathway that leads us to God as our solution.
Perhaps it can help us to talk about these things during the day (Deut. 6:6-9). It can help us to find help from God in the night through prayer. Perhaps learning to sing hymns, as Joni Eareckson Tada does, can become a way to point them (and yourself) to God in those sleepless moments.
In any case, there are no steps I can outline, but perhaps freeing yourself from the burden of being the only one who can help your child sleep can help you consider other options. Even in this, God can help us to care for our children. Perhaps His gift of sleep to them comes as we help them learn how to settle themselves in Him and find the rest they need.
3. Accept Sleeplessness as an Invitation to Trust
I want to include this, even if it may sound trite.
Aside from physical or chronic health issues, often our sleeplessness is tied to anxiety. This churning of our minds often centers around ruminating on all the things we cannot control.
I’ll be looking a little more on this in our next post, but for now, I’d like to leave you with this: perhaps this sleepless season of your life is just what God has ordered for you now. He knows there is an area in your life that is bothering you. Even if you are experiencing physical insomnia, it is still tied to the state of restlessness in your heart.
Wouldn’t it make more sense, instead of fighting it by trying to get yourself to sleep, to submit your cares to the Lord instead (1 Peter 5:7)? Sometimes our restlessness comes when we want a particular outcome instead of trusting Him to do what is best. So we plot and scheme to get that result, resulting in a churning mind.
What might happen if we bring our worries to Him, big and small, and bring them to Him in prayer? Instead of trying to figure things out on our own, we can let our requests be made known to Him (Phil. 4:6), believing that He will make our paths straight (Prov. 3:5, 6).
This is the rest of the soul that Jesus promises, the peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7). But will you let them go into His hands?
Again, I’ll delve into more of this in our next post, but for now, I encourage you to reframe your sleeplessness in this way. Instead of fighting them, won’t you consider acknowledging your struggles and then entrusting them into His hands? Let yourself fall asleep to the truth that we are His beloved, and He will do what is best for us, even if it is not what we desire.
Sweet dreams!
