Longing For Sleep
It's Two O'clock in the morning as I'm writing this. The longer I live, the more I observe how often people struggle with exhaustion. I can't count on two hands how many conversations I have had with people experiencing burnout, or fatigue. Yet so often, it is a season; it comes and goes with the passage of a few days. For me though, it may be an even more prevalent reality than is usual, since I have sleep apnea and I have worked the night shift for about seven years. Truth is, the reach of profound tiredness stretches far back into my past.
During high school, I fell out of my chair during driver's ed class, fast asleep as I dropped from my seat. The driver's ed instructor said I twitched when I hit the floor. I was one of the top graded students in his class, but he told my mom he was concerned about me. In college, I couldn't keep my eyes open during class, and nearby classmates would take pictures of me with my head planted on the table. Around my sophomore year I began to have severe instances of sleepwalking. Later in my mid-twenties energy drinks and constant, heavy caffeination became normal for me. Things got worse as I began to fall asleep while walking from one zone to another at my job. I would re-enter consciousness with no idea how I got where I was.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and I gradually became aware of how significant my sleep disorder was. On average, I was waking up 2 to 3 times an hour, all night long. This meant I could sleep 12 hours a day and wake up feeling more tired than the average joe who got 6 hours of sleep. Before visiting the doctor, I began to confirm this through a series of conversations, by asking friends and co-workers "is it normal to crave sleep at all points throughout the day?" To which the normal reply was "No… I might feel like I need a nap once a day, maybe." Slowly it dawned on me that spending every moment longing for rest, from when I arose from bed to the sweet release of the fading of my consciousness a little while after work, was not a universal experience. Not everyone felt that way.
After being diagnosed with sleep apnea and treated, I remember waking up from my first night of full sleep with my new CPAP machine. The initial moments of waking up were disorienting; I had a mask strapped to my face with a hose extending off the bed to the nearby machine, which tracked my breathing and responded with increasing air pressure at times when I wasn't getting enough oxygen. Once I removed the mask and sat up though, I felt a flush in my face and my fingertips were tingling. My limbs were brimming with energy even though I hadn't even stepped out of bed yet. My thoughts were crystal clear and sharp seconds after waking. It was as if I had a full battery.
In my whole life, I could not recall ever feeling this way. Was this how people normally felt after a good night's sleep?
The initial revelation of the power of sleep suddenly had a ripple effect as I began to automatically re-examine my past in light of what I now knew. Questions poured through my mind. What would my life have been like if I had known of this earlier? Would my relationships have gone better? Would my priorities have been different? Would my nearly constant memory problems and brain fog have gone away? Could I have avoided my divorce? I immediately began to connect this malady to all of the times I could remember in my life where I had missed the mark.
Would things have gone better if I had been more awake?
Being Awake and Having Good Aim
In my heart, I was left with how to respond to my new reality. What could I do to heal the parts of my life left undone by my perpetual struggle with the unconscious state? Beyond even this, there were deeper things on my heart. I spent so much of my life under the influence of an invisible disorder, one that no one, not even my parents, ever noticed. It had an irreversible effect on those years of my life, robbing me of motivation, vigor, and clarity. In one sense, it was no one's fault; it was quite simply a condition I was born into. Opportunity, resources, my upward mobility… all of it was affected by something I could not control, because I couldn't see it. It was a painful realization.
Within all of that seeming misery, could there be any kernel of goodness? All of that miserable striving... long hours of work for years on end, endlessly resisting my body's urging to lay down and become a defenseless, blind heap, all for the payoff of doing it all over again… it may not have produced more money in my bank account and more chances at advancement, but I could only hope that it did produce something irreplaceable.
The invisible power of long, dreamless sleep dictated that I would not be distracted by the blessings of sudden fortune or relational successes. The ebbing wakeful hours of my young life were paralleled by my wavering, meager successes in my professional life, hampered by unseen health problems and the resulting lack of motivation. In that way, the course of my life was sealed before I even stepped into it.
It smacked against the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" advice that filled the books and movies of my upbringing. Rugged individualism couldn't save me from a body that could ignore 5 alarms and sap my vitality. So what goal could I aim for if I could not be the hero?
Sight
That irreplaceable something ended up being far beyond the view of what was imminent. In a world of impermanence, securing resources is essential. Money, status, being well thought of and having a portfolio of successful endeavors seemed to be the best way of achieving the comfort that I hoped for. For the time being, the unstoppable comfort of sleep had robbed me of more significant comforts that would let my heart be at ease. My jobs, my marriage, even my friendships, all of that was what seemed imminent; it was what was just out of reach. Now though, I could not afford to focus on what was near; either I had to seek deeper goodness, or face the bleak reward of my present prospects.
During this time of refocus, of turning my mind away from the imminence of the present, forgotten verses began to drip on my mind, first from memory, but later I began to seek them out and read them repeatedly:
“Therefore I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear.
Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Consider the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Aren’t you worth more than they?
Can any of you add one moment to his life span by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes?
Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these.
If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you — you of little faith?
So don’t worry, saying, ‘What will we eat? ’ or ‘What will we drink? ’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
From the slow drip of those words, I began to drink comfort in a way that the deepest sleep never brought me. To think that beyond the rat race, beyond the machinations of commerce and social standing, that ultimate reality was looking after me like a father looks after a needy child sated my craving for rest. In one sense, I could be blissfully unconscious again; undisturbed and unafraid of what hells may come. I did not have to be the hero. I did not have to bear the burden of directing the course of my own life. Yet in another sense I was irrevocably aware; the desire to achieve had lost its enslaving influence over me, because I was in the arms of a Father who gives life and breath and everything. Secure In His hands, I was free to cultivate a joyful life, regardless of my place within the many hierarchies I existed within.
I concluded that the ability to sleep, like so many things, is something we take for granted. Yet it can be taken from us at any moment. In this moment, the veil of apparent permanence is being lifted, and we are seeing that stock markets rise and fall and retirements dry up. Clothing fades and wears away. Status fades with beauty, and popularity fades as the acuity of our minds give way. Our bodies are susceptible to all manner of threat. All this we experience as conscious people with will and intention to climb social ladders and carve out something for ourselves. But in every night there is a lesson in our unconsciousness, losing control of ourselves as the sun goes down;
all we have, even our own breath, we receive as a gift.
Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I do not get involved with things too great or too wondrous for me.
Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like a weaned child.
Psalms 131:1-2 CSB
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