Some nights the ceiling becomes a canvas for every worry I thought I’d set down, and I’ve learned — slowly, imperfectly — to turn that restlessness toward something better than dread.
Lord of the sleepless hours,
You know what’s circling tonight. You know the thing I keep rehearsing — the conversation I can’t undo, the decision I can’t yet make, the fear dressed up as planning. You know it better than I do, and still you are not alarmed.
Help me trust that darkness is not the same as absence. That quiet is not the same as emptiness. That the fact I cannot sleep does not mean something is terribly wrong, only that I am human, and tired, and in need of you.
I don’t ask you to fix everything before morning. I only ask that you sit with me here — in the half-light, in the hum of the house settling, in the small and ordinary holiness of this moment — until my grip on all of it loosens just enough.
You kept watch long before I woke. You will keep watch long after I finally rest.
Let me believe that tonight.
Amen.