The Other Side of Midnight

We’ve all had them.  Nights where we burn the midnight oil, tossing and turning, going over and over the situation or issue that burdens our hearts and keeps us from sleep.  We wrestle and toss, we mentally and emotionally create scenarios inside our heads of what we think our solution should look like.  If only we could find the switch to turn off our minds and let us rest.  

I have tried, I think, every trick I know:   Getting up to snack on some particular carbohydrate that I’m sure will satisfy my palate and my thoughts.  Staring at my phone.  Starting a game of Sudoku.  Playing a YouTube video or listening to a reading on my Bible app.  It helps.  It lulls.  It quiets.

But then the sun comes up and nothing has changed despite all the worrying I did on the night shift. 

One the hardest lessons to learn is perhaps the one that — once we master it — is the most helpful.  We must surrender.  

The problem is figuring out how.

Surrender is counter-intuitive to us.  It’s sort of like when you are driving and hit black ice. Your instincts, your reactions, tell you to hit the brakes and turn the wheel in the direction out of danger.  But the truth is, the opposite is what avoids the crash.  We are taught to only tap our brakes and to steer in the same direction that the back of the car is heading.  It is a split-second behavior that can make all the difference where we land.

The things that hurt our hearts requires the same.  The more we resist them, the more we give in to steering our way out of them, the more trouble we seem to have.  Acceptance is the first step to surrendering.  

We coast and go along in life.  We obey the laws, we are courteous and thoughtful and take good care to make certain that everyone in our charge is safely buckled up and secure.  We think that as long as we are doing what we are supposed to do, we can anticipate a little stormy weather.  Bad things will only happen to those who are careless or unprepared or not paying attention.

But in an instant, that all can change.

What I am offering here, is only a snippet guide to what I am still working hard at understanding for myself.  It’s learning to let go and know that we are helpless on our own to figure out an outcome.  Sometimes the only thing we can do is go with our situations and not try so hard to pull out of them. (Yes, Jesus take the wheel.)  It means standing, letting the chips fall, and knowing we can only do what we can do. 

What does this mean?  Like the Serenity Prayer, we have to learn to accept things that we cannot change.  This is different from liking it, wanting it, volunteering for it.  It just means that these are things that are beyond our control.  We have no power other than prayer.  

If you are like me, even in our acceptance of certain circumstances, we still find a way to resist them.  We think people will change.  We walk in our faith that God will provide a surprise twist that will render everything back the way it was.  We think that if we stay steadfast, those around us will continue to do what they do until somehow, someway, it will all come back around and get back in alignment with us.  

We think that the principals of what to do when we hit black ice will change. 

The truth is, no matter what, we are going to end up in a different place than where we think we are headed. 

I wish I had an easy answer to the things that burden our hearts.  I wish I could laminate a card that we could all put on our proverbial dashboards as an easy reference for when the going gets tough.  I wish we did not have sleepless nights and long, arduous trials.  

But we all do.

All I can tell you is what I am learning myself.  We have to surrender everything we are going through to Him.  Everything.

We all have endings we would like to see.  We all have happily ever afters that we dare to hope for.  We all have our will that we pray would line up with God’s.  But we cannot know what tomorrow brings.

Only He does.

There are reasons, though often unimaginable, for what we must endure.  And though the trail is never easy, though we can’t possibly imagine an outcome that will make what we are going through “worth it,”  we have to know that if we let God take us through it His way, we will get to the the other side intact. 

Sometimes what we want looks nothing like what things are.  Our hearts still ache and break.  We still have needs in search of resolution.  We all dream of better days that often are elusive.

But they will come.  

We need to rest in knowing that we cannot change what we cannot change.  That God is in control.  That we must tap the brakes and steer where He is taking us while trusting that He knows the way.

Accept what is while you believe for what is to come.  Surrender — daily, hour by hour, moment by moment.

It will all be okay.

Get some sleep.