Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

• Matthew 8:23-27

“When the disciples were climbing into the boat (Matt. 8:23-27), they seemed quite secure. They seemed to have no fear. Why were they secure? They looked at the beautiful, calm sea and were quite at peace and without a care. But with the rising wind and waves, they lost their peace and became anxious. Jesus was reportedly asleep. Only faith can sleep without a care, for sleep is a reminder of paradise; faith has its security in God alone. The disciples could not sleep. Their security was gone. They had nothing to hold on to. Theirs had been a false security that was only fear in different dress. Such security does not overcome fear and soon disappears, for fear is overcome only by faith, which leaves behind all false securities, leaves them fallen and broken. Faith does not believe in itself, or in a favorable sea, or in favorable conditions, or in its own power, or in any other human power, but solely, completely in God-whether there are storms or not. It is the only faith that is not superstition, that does not lead us back into fear, but rather frees us from fear.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You (devotion for January 12, devotions compiled from his writings)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of fear and a lack of security.

There are other reasons to lack sleep.  I have worked on 3-4 hours of sleep each night for a week by dreaming up a fictional story, back in the old days.

That kind of thing rarely happens anymore.  I use a CPAP due to sleep apnea.  I start to piece a story together and the next thing I know is that I awaken in the middle of the night.  It is usually due to the CPAP mask leaking.  It is funny that the thing that is supposed to help you sleep is what wakes you up.

Other CPAP users have told me that you simply cannot toss and turn at night while wearing the CPAP.  First, I cannot retrain my body to not toss and turn. And second, my mask can leak simply by my dry skin and starting to breathe through my mouth.  Tightening the mask to prevent such leakage would be highly uncomfortable.

But to add to everything else, I have a watch that monitors my sleep patterns.  If I get more than two hours of deep sleep, it does not matter how much light sleep that I get, I am good to go, unless I get more than about three and a half hours of deep sleep.  When I get that much, I have a hard time waking up.

The thing is that Your sleep habits change over the course of your life.  From about the time I hit puberty until I became a father, I had insomnia.  Then the insomnia returned about the time my second child was born.  And I became a Christian late in my teens.

But fully trusting in the Lord is something that grows.  When I finally learned to trust God in all situations, especially in times when financial worries were a real thing for us, I did as Bonhoeffer suggests.  The insomnia no longer had control over me.  My wife would freak out when I did not “freak out” over a month when our budget was blown.  I simply moved a little money from savings.  Even now, I have less than three percent of what they suggest is the minimum for retirement.  Yet, I know that God will take care of me.

If God can calm the storm, He can calm the financial storm and the storm of worry within me.  In fact, I simply do not worry about that.  Aches and pains?  If they stay around for a while, I will tell the doctor about it.  Again, not worrying, not fearing, and not losing sleep.

Maybe the reason that we worry is that we try to control the uncontrollable.  Once you realize that you cannot control something, but God can, tapping out (an old wrestling term) is the best policy.  God takes over and we trust God.

And we get the necessary sleep that we need.

And when that rare night happens when you awake at two in the morning and sleep does not quickly return, God may have other plans.  I have gotten some of my best writing done on those nights before the sun comes up, and mid-afternoon, a thirty-minute power nap keeps the work going.

Regardless of how your sleep patterns change, God has everything under control.  We need to trust Him.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.