On Friday, I ran an old post. I was planning to be out of town the night before and I wanted to be ready. I don’t remember what I searched for as I looked at my archives, but I ended up with a post about sleep.

Actually, it’s about Psalm 4, about sleep coming from God.

At the time I scheduled it, I didn’t know that I would be waking up too early on Friday morning with one of those worry loops running in my brain. You know the kind, where you pick up one piece of a problem and it runs over and over? You try to go back to sleep, but you can’t. Because the loop keeps running.

Yep. That’s how I woke up on Friday. The loop ran for an hour or so, as I thought and dozed and thought and dozed. And then, after the first hour, I remembered my post, and Psalm 4. In the middle of that Psalm, David writes.

when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent.

So that’s what I started doing. Searching my heart, then being silent. Stopping arguing, asking God to intervene.

Somewhere along the line, sleep came. And I had enough rest … and peace … for the day.

I’m amused that I benefited from my own words, from a post that I happened to look back at. I’m humbled by how much I don’t remember of what I tell other people. I’m encouraged by God’s willingness to let me keep learning, to help me keep practicing the trusting that He invites me to.

I’m doing a lot of that these days, practicing trusting, learning to share, accepting that there are limits to my capacity to be a savior. Turns out I’m not one.

I’m relieved. I can sleep.