At Three in the Morning, I Stopped Calculating and Just Lay There

Ten past three in the morning. Every time my phone screen lights up, I do the math. Four hours if I fall asleep now, four and a half if I'm asleep within thirty minutes. The more I calculated, the further sleep drifted. I had a presentation in front of my team at ten the next morning, and in my head I had rewritten the first sentence more times than I could count.

When I close my eyes, the things I said during the day pass by again. I shouldn't have put it that way. Should I have left that material out? My heart raced all night over things no one would give a second thought to. My body was worn out, but only my head was as bright as it is in the daytime.

It wasn't the first night like this. It always went this way the night before something important. The worry that not sleeping would ruin tomorrow drove sleep away all over again. Next to me I could hear my family breathing evenly, and that sound was a comfort, and also somehow made me feel more alone.

The night I put down the effort to sleep

That night I decided to stop calculating. It took a few of these nights before I understood that the harder I hold on to the idea that I must sleep, the further it gets. So instead I decided to do only one thing, which was to lie there. I decided to think of it this way: even if I'm not asleep, I'm resting.

If nights like this have been going on for days, it isn't a weakness of will. If it's affecting your daytime life, talking about it with a clinic or a counselor is also a good choice. When nights like this drag on, I mean to do that myself.

I turned my phone's brightness all the way down and opened today's verse in still().

In peace I will both lay myself down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me live in safety.

Psalm 4:8 (WEB)

I didn't read this sentence as a promise that “I will sleep tonight.” Read that way, it would become homework again. Instead I stayed with the words “lay myself down” and “safety”. It felt like a sentence telling me I'm allowed to be lying here now, and that tonight I am safe.

I don't remember when I fell asleep. When the alarm rang my body was heavy, and the presentation went better than I'd expected. There will be days when it doesn't go well. Even so, I now have one thing I can try on nights like that.

Today's breath — Don't call for sleep. Just lie there.