Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato [Public domain; Wikipedia]
I’ve connected insomnia and prayer for years.
But I’m getting tired of it.
Long ago, I heard some sage person comment, “if you can’t sleep at night, pray. The devil doesn’t like it and he’ll stop harassing you so you can fall asleep.”
I tried it.
Often.
I haven’t found the saying to be true.
After seemingly days of not sleeping well–I must stress, I eventually get enough sleep to dream–I decided to stop fighting and arguing about my lack of sleep.
My friends, not to mention my poor family, are tired of hearing about my insomnia.
I’ve read countless articles. I’ve tried everything except sleeping pills and the doctor’s latest suggestion: “I’ve found that people who have trouble falling asleep have psychological issues and should deal with those.”
I’m not dealing with worry or personal problems. I just can’t get my brain to shut off.
Some of you are familiar with the problem of getting a song stuck in your head. Louie, Louie is a famous culprit.
It’s like that for me, particularly with Zumba music.
How to stop the whirling?
The major problem is my brain doesn’t want to lie down and go to sleep. If I get up for a bathroom visit, my brain urges me to look at the clock upon my return and calculate how many hours of sleep I have left until I need to get up.
That’s not helpful.
All those wonderful articles about the problems caused by a lack of sleep?
Unfair. I’d love to get 8 hours of deep, restful sleep.
We can dream, can’t we?
I try!
I turn off the electronics an hour early. The room is dark (or I wear a mask), the air is cool, the pillow perfect, the clock turned away from the wall.
I wear socks if my feet are cold. My neighborhood is quiet. I lock up the yowling vintage cat if she’s causing trouble.
I’ve curtailed my life-long habit of reading a novel in bed. (Never nonfiction, that engages my brain too much).
I read in a chair until my eyes are sagging and then I climb into bed.
Brain jumps to alert!
This weekend I gave up and decided to embrace insomnia as God’s call to prayer.
(Will this satisfy my brain?)
Adding prayer to the night’s agenda.
Maybe I’m the only person available to pray for a specific need: like a woman in labor or a person who is dying.
I go through the mental list of prayer needs I’ve encountered during the day.
I think about the challenges facing loved ones or Facebook friends and pray for those.
(Including some of my readers–maybe even you).
I remind God I would like to be asleep.
On nights the prayers seem to go on forever, I get to the President and the cabinet, Congress and others in Washington.
I remind God of what I need to do the next morning and why sleep would be a good idea.
(Bargaining; brain loves it)
And I often pray a prayer shared by my military wife/writer pal Karen Whiting. It goes something like this:
“Lord, you know my situation and all that I have to do tomorrow. Please give me the sleep I need to accomplish those goals. Amen.”
That doesn’t usually put me to sleep, but it allows me to relax. God will provide the rest for what I need to do the next day.
If you decide to join me in the middle-of-the-night prayers and need a guide, read my blog post Six Things to Pray About in the Middle of the Night.
The thought that makes me grateful.
Bernadette SoubirousBy abbé P. Bernadou [Wikipedia]
I’m warm and comfortable.
I’m not like Saint Bernadette (from the movie The Song of Bernadette).
She got a call to pray, too, and awoke at 4 o’clock every morning to go to the chilly chapel and kneel on cold stone–which she did for years.
She contracted tuberculosis in her right knee–which led to her death at 35.
With the example of such a woman, I cannot complain about my insomnia.
I’ve decided to be thankful.
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I’ve put together a PDF booklet of all my blog posts on prayer. If you would like a copy of Thoughts on Prayer, sign up to receive my newsletter here, or just ask in the comments.
Lifelong insomniac here, too. When I was about 10, my sister and I had a discussion about whether our bedroom door should be open or closed at night. She wanted it closed since the night light in the hallway bothered her. I wanted it open, since by the night of that light I could at least see around our room while I lay awake for an hour or two before I went to sleep.
My mother (sensibly) declared that since my sister went to sleep right away and I didn’t, my desire for the door was more relevant than my sister’s.
I consoled myself for years that at least I wasn’t one of those people who wake up in the middle of the night and take hours to go back to sleep. It might take me two hours to go to sleep in the first place, and I might awaken 10 times during the night, but at least I went back to sleep in five or ten minutes. Yay menopause. Now I’m one of “those” people, too.
I do sometimes find myself praying for people during those awake times–but not as faithfully as I should. Usually I’m trying every trick that has occasionally worked in the past.
I can relate, big time.
I have many mental games I play to help bore myself until sleep claims me: how many names of God I can think of, name vegetables, fruits, or book titles that start with every letter of the alphabet, how many verses can I quote, name 30 such and suches, I relax every part of my physical body starting with my brain and working down, I think of as many “soft” things as I can (to help relax) and so forth. I keep a boring book by the night stand. And I never look at the clock, because then for sure I won’t be able to sleep. I self-talk, “you will be ok, you will make it even if you don’t get much sleep.” to unmask the panic/fear. I change locations, read in the living room awhile etc. The well-worn rut of “I hope I can sleep tonight” the moment you think it sets you up to not sleep. I often ask a God for peace, to give me verses and songs of peace. These help me. The mental games help me, I often fall asleep while doing them. The exercise of praying helps too.
My struggle with insomnia began after I went through a sort of emotional breakdown caused by a scary, fear-driven event. I couldn’t sleep that night and for days, my nerves were ultra sensitized. Ever since, it has been a struggle. But I have learned to coexist with it, which has helped dismantle its hold on me. As my fear of not getting enough sleep has diminished, my ability to relax and to fall sleep has become more regular. The book, “Hope and Help for Your Nerves” by Harriet Learner, gives some good advice on how to relax through anxiety-driven physical issues. She unmasks for us how fear of the negative sensation is what binds us to it. It might be helpful. Maybe something here will be useful. I know how frustrating it is, to be alert when you wish to be asleep. I wish you the best.
As one of those people whom Cheryl describes, who wakes in the wee small hours of the morning and cannot get back to sleep, I’ve found the cure is to go to bed later. If I go to bed before 11 PM, I will wake up again. When I have one of my white nights, as I term them, I just accept that I will probably not sleep and use the time to catch up on all the ideas that need processing in my head. That could involve prayer as needed.
In my large extended family, I know of one young boy who could not sleep at night because he couldn’t shut off his brain. Diagnosed with ADHD, even the medication was not helping. Then his parents tried melatonin, and it worked.
“The major problem is my brain doesn’t want to lie down and go to sleep. If I get up for a bathroom visit, my brain urges me to look at the clock upon my return and calculate how many hours of sleep I have left until I need to get up.
That’s not helpful.”
I can relate to that Michelle…. 🙁
I’ve been searching for my off switch for years.
Thank you for all your comments. I guess I should be praying for all of you, too!
An old friend just wrote a hair-raising account of his 28 year experience of getting only 2-5 hours of sleep at night. Within two weeks of retiring, he was sleeping 8 hours a night.
I realize I have more trouble sleeping when I’m writing–which is where I am right now. I slept well over December when I took a break.
Hmmm.
I looked for your book recommendation, Norma, but it’s not in my library. Thank you. I’ll keep it in mind.
I come from a long line of insomniacs. I have decided that maybe it is just a matter of my biological clock being set to a different schedule than most people. I have read all the articles, made all the changes and still couldn’t shut my brain off. I even bought a voice recorder to record the thoughts I was having nightly.
In 2008, I had the unfortunate experience of being admitted to a psych ward due to lack of sleep. My body started having strange symptoms including non-stop twitching of the eyes.
While my husband was in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Iraq, I would spend those hours praying for him and others in his unit. Now I spend those hours praying for my children who have left home and begun their own families.
I was told by a dear saint of God “if God wakes you up, pray for whomever is on your mind at that very moment because you are a “prayer warrior serving in the Army of God”.
I would like a copy of your Thoughts on Prayer.
Thanks for sharing–I’d not thought of the voice recorder . . .
Another military wife! Frankly, a husband on deployment, long ago, was part of my sleep issue. I’m so thankful you prayed for him and his units. I’m sure it made a difference.
I appreciate your friend’s comment and it’s how I pray. Whomever God lays on my heart, gets the prayers. And on some nights it’s the same person over and over again. That happened last weekend. I learned the next morning he had died that night.
Delighted to send the booklet.
This may seem silly, but when I find it hard to go to sleep, I also find that my jaw is tense. I then reach for a sugar free lozenge to help me relax. I have found that the lozenge relaxes my jaw and helps me sleep. In the morning you can tell if you went to sleep right away or not because lozenges do not dissolve when you are asleep.
I’ve never heard of this suggestion, Jo. The sugar doesn’t cause a problem and you don’t choke? I’ve tried melatonin now, it helped some. I still drink the Yogi or Nighty Night tea and sometimes they help, but this is a new idea for me. Thanks.