Day 3: Genesis 5-7; Matthew 3:7-17; Matthew 4:1-11; Psalm 3:1-8; Proverbs 1:10-19

“I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.” (Psalm 3:5 NIV)

When I became a mother in 2022, I became obsessed with sleep. Now, for those moms who have wonderful sleepers, you may not fully understand this, and I am so happy for you that you don’t! But for those of us who had babies with sleep issues, you know that the moment you realize your child isn’t going to naturally drift off when they need to, you start working to figure it out. My little guy never followed wake-windows, had every sleep regression, and didn’t sleep through the night until 11 months old. To this day we still deal with early morning risings and poor daycare sleep. And when baby isn’t sleeping well, mama isn’t sleeping well.

When we finally started getting into a rhythm and my son was falling asleep on his own, in his crib, I dealt with my own host of sleep issues. I remember getting him back down after his middle of the night feeding, and just laying awake, too exhausted to fall asleep, my mind racing over all of my anxieties for my child–and my anxieties for myself. At one point, my husband spent the majority of a month away from us due to work, and I was doing all my son’s care on my own, while working a FT job and juggling a lapse in daycare. During that time, I would have terrible thoughts about dying–what if I suffered a stroke and my son was left wailing, trying to unsuccessfully get my attention because I was gone? I cried thinking about how confused and alone he would be, and how he could possibly cause severe injury to himself before we were discovered. I was so scared this was going to happen that I told my family I needed then to check in on me and to promise they would drop everything and locate my son if they didn’t get a response. Yes, this is what extreme postpartum anxiety can do to a woman. It’s debilitating and heartbreaking, and women NEED better support in postpartum so that they can successfully move through these hormone changes without the debilitating depression, fear, or harmful thoughts.

Remembering these feeling is why this verse hit a nerve and was my main take-away from Day 3’s chapters. Sleep. Sustaining sleep. A gift from the Lord. I don’t think we recognize how important sleep truly is and how appropriate a topic, especially when yesterday we focused on literal dreaming. It’s no coincidence that we’re recommended to sleep a third of our daily hours. There are many reasons why we feel so calm and peaceful after a good nights sleep. Those same reasons are why the enemy uses anxiety, fear, and lies to disrupt this beautiful gift.

If I’m honest with myself, there are so many ways I could have prioritized sleep in my postpartum period. I could have ignored the dust (no one would have cared) and left the bottles to my husband (he happily contributes in every way he can). I could have slept when I could and asked for help in all the others areas I needed. And when I couldn’t get that support, I could have just done the next thing that needed to be done and only focused on that. Instead, the hormonal changes along with almost a full year of poor sleep combined into a lethal dose that turned me into a panic-stricken, fearful individual. And in turn, I couldn’t sleep, recover, and benefit from the beautiful gift that our bodies receive every night we prioritize it.

Can I say that I am completely out of the woods? Nope! I absolutely still let anxiety and that day’s needs keep me from getting to bed on time–along with just wanting time to scroll and play games and veg out. But the Lord has been emphasizing rest in my life for the past year, and I’m learning to accept the sustaining, life-giving gift of sleep. Sleep is an act of trust–that the fears and anxieties of the day can be placed in his loving hands when we accept the gift of losing control.

I’d encourage you to ask God what it would mean to accept sleep as sustenance in your own life. How would your evenings and nights change? How would your outlook on life look? The Lord is calling us into a life fully dependent on Him, and sleep is no different than our waking hours in terms of relying on Him.