Sleepy

he will take great delight in you
he will quiet you with his love
he will rejoice over you with singing…

The juggling thing is a cliché but I’m going to use it anyway. A lot of the time I feel like I’ve got too many balls in the air. Like I’m trying to keep up all these different things at once – or, actually, trying to keep up with them. Work (although to be fair I am doing English…), drama stuff, sports stuff, church stuff, all the million things I want to read – at my stupidest I even find myself feeling like all the people in my life are balls that I have to juggle (for which I am deeply sorry, and about which I might write another blog sometime). Basically, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities – we all have, surely – a lot of good things we’re supposed to be doing, that we can’t forget about, can’t lose track of, can’t slacken the pace on, can’t relax about, can’t stop. Can’t really breathe on occasion. Maybe that’s an overstatement, but I bet that most of you know what I mean when I say: there’s something in my chest that feels like a fibre that’s pulled taut, that feeling of being in tension, of what’s in me never quite being able to lie down flat. When I can be watching iPlayer, or chatting and laughing, even in bed trying to go to sleep but still there’s something underneath that hasn’t quite relaxed. A weight that’s not quite lifted. Maybe it’s just me, but in case it’s not, let me tell you a story about what’s making it better.

***

She paces up and down the small hotel room, her too-tight boots move swiftly over the carpet. She stops, facing away from him, and starts trying to pull them off, still standing. She wrenches the first one off and almost loses balance. The second is easier, she picks the other one up and places them neatly beside a chair near the door. She stands up straight, starts scraping her back up into a tight – she stops – lets it fall, her brow creased – what is she doing? – she is supposed to be going to sleep.

“Dad – ”

He crosses the room, stands in front of her, takes gentle hold of her shoulders in both hands. “Rose, look at me.” She lifts her head, looks into his eyes. Dad and his big brown eyes. He smiles, and she can’t help but smile back. But she can’t quite hold it and she looks out the window and then down again, the constriction comes back into her eyes, you can see that her jaw is tensed. You never know what’s going to come through that door. She looks again to check that its shut and of course it is but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s not even like she’s planning anything any more, she’s just trying to hold everything in her head, keep it all in sight because if you can’t see it you don’t know where it is.

“Come on, Rose.” He has pulled the little chair up beside the bed, and he is sat in it, too small for him, slightly comical. She goes over and sits on the edge of the bed.

“Look at me, Rose. It’s OK.”

“Dad, it’s – ”

“I know. I know, Rose. I really do. Go on, just lie down.”

“But I need to – “ She stutters – doesn’t know where to start.

“Right now you need to rest.”

“But I need to – ”

“Not right now. Right now, you need to rest.”

She looked up and he looked into her eyes. And somewhere underneath there, there was fear. His heart ached.

“Rose. I’m here. Don’t worry, you’re old dad will be right here, right here beside your bed. I’ll keep an eye on you, all right? Just like I used to. I’m an old man now, I don’t need sleep like you do – I’ll be looking out for you.”

“Dad, you don’t have to.”

“No I don’t. But I’d like to.”

There is a moment of stillness. She looks at him – looks away. She folds back the covers, lies down on her side, slides her feet in and pulls the duvet up over her shoulder. He smiles at her again.

“Wait, what about you? I needed to ask – ”
He lets out a little breathy laugh – “Thanks, but, don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

She looks up at him, brow furrowed again, but then something seems to let go and she says, softly, “OK.”

Her head sinks deeper on the pillow, as if the pillow is breathing out.
And then, softly, slowly, his warm, melodic little voice, reedy with age, starts singing to her the song he always used to sing. Rising and falling, gentle, clear. And she can feel the water of a joyful tear gathering. As it escapes she closes her eyes.

Soundly, she sleeps.

***

One night, just before the start of this term, I was with some people singing to God and some thoughts struck me; struck me like a wave of warm water. It struck me that I don’t need to hold on to everything, that I don’t need to keep up with everything, that I can’t. It struck me that God, my Dad, sees me with my arms stacked high with stuff, struggling to balance all these plans and responsibilities and people without them all falling off, and he holds his hands out to me and says, “Let me take that for you.” And he can. That he says to me, “Mike, you’re quite little and tired and you need to rest, but I’ve got it under control.” In fact, I can only manage about 16 hours and then I find myself needing to stop again and he says, “Yes, sleep. I don’t need you to keep the world going round. To be honest, it’s not really your responsibility while you’re awake. I’ll be fine, and I’ll be here when you wake up. Sleep.” He tells me that I can take a day off in every seven and I can trust him that it will be OK. That the world won’t come crashing down around me. That when I’ve spent all week desperately straining to keep the weight up, and at last I take my hands away, it doesn’t fall – and I turn around and see him behind me, and he was holding it himself all along.

And the other beautiful thought that struck me was that with Him, there’s no rush. Everywhere else, in all the other hours in my calendar, there is pressure, there are time limits, deadlines - time is of the essence - but when I’m with Him, we’ve got forever. When I’m with Him, I get to taste eternity. And I like that. And I like what Zephaniah says… (chapter 3, verse 17…)

he will take great delight in you
he will quiet you with his love
he will rejoice over you with singing.