Long Night

Danny has had some trouble with sleeping.  At night, he does fairly well, often giving me a 4-5 hour stretch so I only have to get up once in the middle of the night.  However, his naps could use some lengthening during the day.  With him waking so frequently during the daytime, I wonder if I’m actually more exhausted than I would be at night, because I’m pulled in so many directions during the daylight.  I simply can’t tend to everyone’s needs at once.  So poor Danny has to do quite a bit of fussing in his bed while I finish dinner or clean up messes.  As I’ve been feeling run down, I recalled a blog post that I drafted before Danny was born.  I never posted it for one reason or another, and so I went back and re-read it and decided to post it now.  Even though I’m currently struggling with daytime, rather than nighttime, sleep issues, I still found comfort in remembering God’s faithfulness during the “long nights” we experience.  Here’s what I had written:    

Nearly every evening, after Jim and I have tucked Becky into her bed, gently covered her with a blanket and kissed her goodnight, she’ll raise her head and plaintively ask, “Is it not going to be a long night?”  Our (faintly exasperated) answer is always the same: “No, it will be a normal night.  Go to sleep.”  After weeks and weeks of this routine, I found myself getting a bit irritated with the nightly question, given that she knew what our answer would be.

However, thanks to the physiological changes of late pregnancy, there have been many recent nights where I am awake for two hours at a stretch in the wee hours of the morning, vainly trying to talk myself back to sleep.  I’ve never before suffered from insomnia, and so these hours of dark wakefulness are foreign and unsettling to me.  After finally falling asleep on one of those occasions, I woke to my alarm only a few short hours later and turned over to complain to Jim, “Ug, that was a long night.”  Catching the irony of my statement, I immediately smiled and thought of my poor daughter, who although she hardly ever wakes up at night, already has a grasp of the truth that our experience of the nighttime hours greatly colors our perception of their length.

I have to admit I have some “long night” fears of my own.  Even though our baby is very wanted and will be fervently loved, I am dreading the sleep-deprivation that inevitably accompanies a new life entering our home.  I actually don’t remember my fatigue from my girls’ early days (probably because I honestly don’t remember anything from those days!), but the memories of Jimmy’s first few months are still quite fresh in my mind.  That child just did not like to sleep.  His daytime naps were erratic, and his nighttime and early-morning wakings were plentiful.  I wasn’t often able to rest during the day when he did sleep, thanks to my high-energy girls, so I felt like I was on a never-ending treadmill that kept ramping up the pace without my permission.

As a result, I’m nervous about this baby’s sleep habits.  I’m nervous about not having enough energy to care for my chatty girls AND my monkey-like son AND a needy baby.  As I bow my head in prayer, I find myself essentially asking the Lord, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to handle these early weeks and months with four children.  Tell me, please, is it not going to be a long night?” 

While ruminating about my worries the other day, I remembered my reaction upon waking after the night of fractured sleep.  I remembered thinking it’s all about our perception of the night.  It’s what we’ve filled the hours with, or didn’t.  Just like when we have a long day, the day literally still contains the same number of hours, it just feels different because of our attitude or schedule.  The Lord is showing me that I need to dwell on His constancy, His never-changing character, His eternal loving-kindness.  When the nights feel long, He is the same as He always is.  When I am wakened out of a sound sleep by the cries of a hungry newborn and I stumble, grumbling into his room, wishing I could be back beneath my sheets, I need to remember that God is awake and ready to walk me through this time of discomfort.  I need to shift my view of sleepless nights from one of dread to one of acceptance.  Paul and Silas used their time in jail to not wallow in their misfortune, but to sing praises to God and witness to others.  Of course, I’m not equating night-time wakings to a prison sentence, but the principle remains.  How I experience the night depends largely on my perception of it.  Am I perceiving it as an inconvenience or as an opportunity to nurture my child, pray and listen quietly to the Lord’s voice?

So just like Becky is really looking for reassurance and consistency when she asks us about the upcoming night, I’m looking for the same thing when I come before the Lord.  I’m asking for my Father to reassure and comfort me, to sustain and uplift me.  And thankfully, He has promised to do just that.    

“The God of the good times is still God in the bad times / The God of the day is still God in the night.”

-from the hymn “God on the mountain” by Lynda Randle.