In the Middle of the Night

I have had a rough couple of weeks.  I am not sure why the wave hit.  It slowly crept up on me. The anguish and sadness were there, washing over me, before I knew what was happening.  I have so many thoughts to pour out of my heart and over this laptop that I struggle to know where to begin.  My heart and emotions have travelled many miles in the last two weeks and it makes it difficult to create order out of all of it as it swirls around in my insides by finding a place to begin.   I have decided to write as many blog posts as I can in the next two days to give birth to all that is moving inside of me.  In the past, this has created a great amount of relief and has helped put my overall health in a better place. I, most likely, will not post them all as I write them…but I may change my mind.  I will say ahead of time, that I may repeat something I have already said in a previous post, or bring up a similar experience.  This means that I am not through working that particular area out of my head and heart.  Some of these emotions circle around and around, while others emerge and slowly fall back to the sea of emotions from which they came.

I have not been sleeping well for about a week now.  Since mid-April, I have been able to sleep fairly well.  I will sleep for about a week just fine, then will have about a four night run of no deep rest.  Anxiety seems to set in more at night and the pounding heart and racing thoughts will keep me awake.  This past week, I have had a hard time falling asleep and then, once I do, I awake shortly after then it repeats itself all night long.  A few nights ago, I woke up after about two hours of sleep and was lying there motionless, listening to the silence.  I had my back turned toward the middle of the bed and suddenly caught myself listening for the life of Michael sleeping next to me.  It was just a natural response to me.  It is what I always did in the past if I woke up in the middle of the night…. be still, and hear his breathing, his deep rest.  I was shocked that my instinctual habit had kicked in during that moment…in the middle of the night.  I had temporarily forgotten everything and was listening for life in the still of the night.  It all happened in a matter of seconds, and when I realized that he was not there, the room felt like a vacuum of silence.  I have never heard such stillness.  It was deafening, almost suffocating.  The tears began to roll down from my eyes and onto my pillow.  I did not move and just let the tears well up and spill out of my eyes.  I loved to hear him sleep.  He worked so hard during the day and lived each day of his life to its’ fullest, that when he allowed himself to stop, he slept and he slept well. 

I have had some bad dreams these past two weeks, as well.  I don’t remember them all, but I do vaguely remember one I had last night. I was in a spiritual battle with a demon, although, in their usual way, it did not appear to me as its true self.  It was just me, in front of a painting, when suddenly some force that I could not see was pulling my ponytail.  I tried to speak to the force and my mouth was frozen.  My mouth was my mode of defense and it had been captured.  After grappling with the force and throwing it off of me, I mustered up all of my being and shouted out at the painting, “Be gone, in Jesus name!”  Getting the words out felt like slow motion. It became still but it did not feel like it was completely gone and then I woke up with my heart racing and pounding in my chest.  I knew it as the spirit of fear.  When I had bad dreams in the past, after waking up from them I would touch Michael’s arm and gently wake him to ask him to pray with me.  He always immediately stirred, grabbed my hand, and went straight to praying out loud. He would speak the word over me, rebuke anything that was not of God, and welcome peace to my rest.  I always said thank you and then he would kiss my hand, cheek, or forehead and wrap his arm around my waist and we would fall back asleep.  Sometimes, I would fight the battle alone by praying aloud by myself.  Even though I would whisper, he would wake up; reach over to hold my hand and say, “Thank you, Jesus,” as an affirmation to my prayer. After waking from the dream last night, I felt very alone fighting this battle without him.  We fought for each other, even in the still of the night.