Are You Sleeping Through the Night?

My smartwatch and I have a complicated relationship.

Every morning, I roll over, bleary-eyed, and check my sleep score. And every morning, that little device has the nerve to tell me exactly how badly I failed at something I've been doing my whole life: sleeping. Honestly, you'd think I'd have gotten the hang of it by now.

Here's how the scoring works. I can earn 50 points for getting a full 8 hours. I can earn 30 more if I go to bed at my set bedtime of 9 p.m. And I can earn up to 20 points based on how many times I wake up during the night, not just a little shift or a sigh, but a full-on, heart-rate-changing, get-out-of-bed kind of awakening.

That last category? That's where things get embarrassing.

On more than one occasion, I have scored a big, fat zero on my interruption score. Zero! You know what that means? It means that little watch recorded over twenty full awakenings in a single night. Twenty! Good grief. I wasn't sleeping; I was basically hosting a party in my bedroom at two in the morning, and nobody was having any fun.

Now, I could chalk it up to chronic illness or an overactive mind. And truthfully, those things play a role. But when I lay awake staring at the ceiling for the umpteenth time at 3 a.m., I've noticed something. My mind isn't usually blank. It's busy. It's rehearsing tomorrow's to-do list, replaying yesterday's conversation, catastrophizing about next week's problem, and generally doing everything it can to convince me that rest is a luxury I cannot afford right now.

Sound familiar?

Here's what I find fascinating. The Bible has quite a bit to say about sleep, and almost none of it involves a wearable device.

In Psalm 127:2, we read this: "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep."

Did you catch that? God gives sleep to His beloved. It isn't something we manufacture. It isn't something we earn by worrying efficiently enough or solving all our problems before midnight. It's a gift from a God who knows we need rest.

And yet, how often do we forfeit that gift?

I think about the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus asked them to watch and pray, and what did they do? They fell asleep. Three times! Now, I've always read that passage with a bit of judgment toward those poor, sleepy disciples. But lately, I wonder if their bodies were simply doing what bodies do when they are carrying burdens too heavy for human shoulders to bear. They weren't meant to carry the weight of what was coming. Neither are we.

The enemy of our sleep is almost never the darkness itself. It's what we carry into the dark: worry, fear, anxiety. The mental noise that refuses to quiet itself at bedtime. We crawl into bed, and instead of resting, we drag every unresolved problem behind us like a pile of luggage. No wonder we toss and turn.

The prescription isn't a better sleep hygiene routine. The prescription is found in Philippians 4:6-7: "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

Be careful for nothing. That means be anxious for nothing. Not for the doctor's appointment. Not for the bill that's due. Not for the relationship that needs mending. Not for the twenty things that have to happen tomorrow.

Notice what the promise is not: it doesn't say God will solve all the problems before morning. It says His peace (the kind that doesn't even make logical sense) will guard your heart and mind. Like a soldier standing watch at the door of your thoughts, so that the worry can't march back in and rob you of your rest.

Here's my challenge for you tonight. Before you close your eyes, instead of rehearsing everything that went wrong or might go wrong, try handing it over. One by one, name each worry and give it to God. He's already awake. He already knows. And He already has a plan.

Let Him keep the night watch. You? You get to sleep.