When You Can’t Sleep at Night
photograph by Julie Elliot
by Julie Elliot
You wake in the night,
parched,
anxious,
thirsty for something you cannot name.
You’ve been worrying again.
Mistaking worry for love,
again.
Trying to control others’ lives.
Forgetting your own.
It dries you out like the pine needles
that scatter themselves outside your bedroom window.
Brown and lifeless they fall to the ground,
in every season, every weather.
An inevitable carpet growing under the old Ponderosa.
You wake to the choice.
Will the falling needles be an endless chore?
You'll rake them constantly even as they drift down
to settle in your hair and on your shoulders.
Or will you let them fall the way they do,
noticing the beauty of their changing patterns,
a lacy mat under your feet
becoming part of the holy ground
on which you stand.
You wake up to your life
as it is.
Call it Presence.
Call it God.
Call it Love.
Immovable reality.
It’s yours. It’s in front of you.
Suffering grows when you worry
against it.
Julie Elliot
is a spiritual director, trained in the Pacific Jubilee SoulGuiding program. She is an artist, teacher, writer and retreat leader. Read more about Julie here.
