Seriously, God...can a solar eclipse mess with my circadian rhythm?
"Whisper in my ear. I am not asleep. Tell me a story." Strahan "Help Me Believe"
Since the solar eclipse my sleep has been all off. I have been waking up once or twice a night for no apparent reason. I think the solar eclipse messed up my biological clock. Like the owls I heard get tricked by the eclipse, so my body is confused when it should and shouldn’t wake up at night.
One thing that God has blessed me with for most of my life has been really deep sleep. For the pockets of times that hasn’t been the case it would leave me unsettled. A few years ago I struggled with a terrible bout of insomnia which led me to a few hours a sleep a day for a little over two weeks. That pushed my sense of sanity. Just looking at my bed spiked my anxiety, which is sad because your bed should be a place of physical refuge. I am no where near that kind of severity right now, but I do have a bit of PTSD from it.
Struggling with sleep is extra hard because sleep is a physically involuntary task. Even if I WANTED to have better sleep and do everything I can to get it—it doesn’t necessarily mean I will if certain conditions aren’t met. When you want something so badly, but aren’t in the driver seat during race day, it feels dreadful.
Didn’t God design our bodies to want to rest and want to heal? So why does it betray you sometimes? And when you know you shouldn’t worry about it, you then begin worrying about the fact you are worry about it. I hope that makes sense. When you worry about worrying our thoughts can feel like a runaway avalanche.
I have met Christians who struggle with insomnia and they often say their prayers don’t seem to work, so they search for physical root causes, stress, etc. because we want an answer. This week I’ve worked out extra, vacuumed the room, changed my blanket, dropped the house temperature, and even tried melatonin (even though it never does a thing for me). Haven’t yet changed my house filter, but could do that later.
Prayer is a necessary response to all mysteries of life, but our prayers must have a focus. I absolutely love what my brother-in-Christ, Aaron Kim, shares about God’s truth when approaching insomnia. He has so many wonderful videos that deal with our mental health, beliefs, and how Jesus and believing in Christ’s truth solves all of that. I’m posting one here in particular about insomnia. Check out his others too.
Amongst other things he reminds us to focus on Christ’s promises in those moments you are awake. It’s time to pray. The promise I go back to is that “I’m dead to sin”1 and what is associated with sin?
Fear.
Fear that I’m not going to get out of this, fear that I’m not going to be healthy, and fear that I’m going to lose my job because I can’t stay focused if I don’t sleep well. If I’m dead to all that in Christ, then my prayer is that I further root in that truth. Help me believe!
After that, I pray for God to change the involuntary, which he can. Often I believe God doesn’t want to heal or help us without us knowing it was God working or we might end up like those nine lepers in Luke 17:11-19 who didn’t come back to Christ after being healed. So if you jump into a prayer of restoration without believing deep in heart who Jesus is and who you are as an heir…maybe it’s time to start there.
My latest sleep encounter was a mixed bag, but when I did wake up I thought of God’s power and Spirit and how it has overcome fear and death. That Spirit lives in me I thought. Then I did have to pray about some items at work that I thought were low-key stressing me out, but I’m realizing it may actually be bothering me much more than I thought. I gave that to God and its outcome—no matter how hard. After that I slept as deep as I can remember in a week or so. I’m not totally out of the woods here, so I pray to hold on to God’s promises in my heart. If I sleep well—awesome. If I don’t, then —as my Brother-in-Christ, Aaron, told me once, “God will give you as much sleep as you need.” Amen.
I’ll finish with one additional truth per my wife when I complain about sleep. My wife will hold me by the head, look me in the eyes, and say, "It’s fine. If I can push out multiple kids out of my body and then wake up three times a night to feed our kids, you are going to be fine.”
This I also believe is God speaking through wisdom…everything is going to be fine.
Having some trouble sleeping or some worry keeping you up at night? What’s God truth for you to hold on to? If you need one, take a look at the verse in the footnote.
Romans 6:11-14 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
Sam what a great post, thanks for sharing! Praying for zzz's for you brother. I like what you are say at the end about whatever sleep we get, God has said that is enough. A pastor recently read to us Psalm 23 in NLT, and there verse 1 says "The Lord is my Shepard, I have all that I need." I liked that. It always seems to me like He is giving me too much or too little of x, but I need to remember he is a sovereign Good Shepard and is giving me "all that I need." And maybe he is giving me "all that I need" so that "I need him." Not so much to be self reliant. Not so little that I am desperate. There, I think about Proverbs 30:8-10 which says "And don't make me too rich or too poor—give me only enough food for each day. If I have too much, I MIGHT DENY THAT I NEED YOU, LORD. But if I am too poor, I might steal and bring shame to the name of my God." I know some of these verses, but honestly that are not always top of mind in these situations. I pray that they would be more and more!