Some years ago a friend was on a retreat. She’d worked hard all week to be able to dart out of work early on a Friday, drive the two hours in rush-hour traffic to the monastery where she arrived just in time for dinner—hardly a feast—and then vespers. She didn’t sleep well in the unfamiliar environment, waking up all too frequently in the middle of the night with thoughts of work piling up back at the office.
The next day, when the group split up and headed outside for quiet meditation, sitting on chairs outside, she found that whenever she tried to practice the approach to prayer the retreat leader had recommended, she fell asleep. Not just once but several times. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus, couldn’t corral her thoughts. She kept nodding off. Was this retreat going to be a waste of time?
She’d signed up for a short session with a spiritual director at the monastery that afternoon. She met with him, filled with a sense of failure. She hadn’t had any of the spiritual revelations she’d hoped for, no grand insights. She hadn’t even been able to memorize the Bible passage she’d promised to learn. Would any of her prayers about her life be answered? Would she ever move forward in her spiritual life? Finally she said to the spiritual director in despair, “What should I do? I keep falling asleep when I pray.”
The answer he gave her was as simple as it was profound: “Perhaps God is telling you that you need to sleep.”
The answer to her prayers was right there in the moment of prayer; the gift she needed most was right at hand. Sometimes a prayer need will keep me awake, tossing and turning, replaying some conversation or torturing myself with futile self-justification. But if I fall asleep in my prayers, I feel quite lucky. It’s as though God is saying to me, “It’s OK, Rick, I’ve got it under control. You can go to sleep now.” A reminder to let God be God and Rick be Rick.
