The Cold Side Of The Pillow

You have turned the pillow over again.

That first second is genuinely lovely. The cool side against your cheek, the little relief of it, and for about four minutes it works. Then the cotton warms up under you and it is the same pillow it always was, and you turn it back, and it is warm on that side too now, and you have run out of pillow.

You are so tired.

Not ordinary tired. The kind where your legs ache in the mattress and your eyes hurt when you shut them and your body is already three quarters of the way there, wanting it, practically begging for it.

And you are keeping yourself awake on purpose.

You would not put it like that. You would say you cannot settle. But the truth is that somewhere around the point where you start to drift, something in you takes hold of the back of your collar and pulls you up again, and you come back into the room with your heart going, and it happens two or three times before you give in and reach for the phone at ten to two.

Because sleep is not a rest for you at the moment. Sleep is a door.

And you know what is on the other side of it, or at least you know the shape of it, and you have known for a while now, and nobody in your life would guess this about you because you are perfectly all right in daylight.

You are afraid of your own bed.

Keep your eyes shut. I mean that. Everything I have to say to you from here can be done in the dark, lying flat, with the light off and your eyes closed and nothing to look at. If this is being read to you, leave it exactly as it is. There is nothing to do with your hands but one small thing, and I will tell you when.

And I want to say two things before anything else, and I want them said plainly.

The first is that I am not going to tell you what any of it means. Not a single image, not one recurring thing. I do not know, nobody at midnight knows, and a stranger explaining your own sleeping mind back to you in the small hours is the last thing you need. So none of that is coming.

The second is that this is not a failure of faith, and I want that thought taken out of this room right now. Frightened is not the same as faithless. It never has been.

Look at what is over you

I want to give you a psalm, and I want you to notice that the frightening things in it are named exactly once each, in passing, and then the whole rest of it is about the covering.

He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day.Psalm 91:4-5

The terror of the night gets four words. That is all the airtime it is given.

And then look at everything around it, because this is the actual subject. Pinions. Wings. Refuge. A shield. His faithfulness. Feathers over you, which is the least frightening image in all of Scripture, and it is chosen on purpose for exactly this hour.

That is what is above your bed tonight. Not a strategy. Not a fight you have to win at three in the morning while half asleep. Cover.

And hear where this is coming from before we go one step further. This is not my comfort for you at midnight. This is Psalm 91 as it is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a written psalm into a dark bedroom and makes it hold.

And do you know what is underneath the whole of that psalm, the thing that makes it work?

You will not fear. Not: nothing is out there. The psalm never says the night is empty. It says you are covered in it, and being covered is what takes the fear out, not the night being quiet.

That is Psalm 91 as written, not a softer version of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a covering feel like a covering.

Now let me name your actual pit, because I do not think it is the dreams.

It is the losing.

It is lying in the dark knowing you are about to stop being in charge of your own head. All day you steer. You manage what you look at and what you think about and how much of anything you let yourself feel, and you are good at it, and it costs you more than anyone knows. And then every night at some point you have to let go of the wheel, and there is nothing you can do to control what happens next, and that is why you are pulling yourself back up by the collar every time you get near the edge.

Beloved, hear this, because this is the whole message. It is not a thought of mine and it is not a technique. It is the written word, and His Spirit is the one making it true of you in this bed tonight.

You do not have to be in charge of the night, because it is already covered.

Somebody is on that watch, and it is not you, and He was on it last night while you were fighting it, and He is on it now. His Spirit does not go off duty at the hour you finally do.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.Psalm 121:3-4

Neither slumber nor sleep. So there is no hour tonight, not one, when the keeping stops.

And two of you do not need to be awake.