a prayer for the night

I am strategic about where I place the pillows at night, once-in-a-blue-moon when Kevin travels, when I pad quietly up the stairs to go to sleep, having thought to start the dishwasher that he always starts at the last of the day, having thought—because I have to—to trace his nighttime steps around the house on my way up.  There are things, in a union, that go unspoken, unlisted, unattended except for the one who naturally keeps them.  There are things that, because of my oneness with Kevin, I hardly even think about day by day.  I let them rest, and that’s my freedom, because he is faithful.

Carefully I carry a psalm, my own psalm of ascent, up the stairs like a cup of water to place beside the bed, though the words really are the quencher.  I turn them over on my tongue in lyrical whisper; I hold them like gems, heavy in the palm.

You are my hiding place;
    you will protect me from trouble
    and surround me with songs of deliverance.

A sacred three, this, a trinitarian kind of keeping:

Cether (SAY-ter), hidden, a secret shelter.

Natsar (naw-tsar), attentively guarded, as a precious thing.

Cabab (sah-VAV), encompassed, surrounded by Love, by joyful cries of rescue.

I wander up the stairs, dousing the lights, imagining God hiding me, Christ treasuring me safe, the Spirit, enveloping me with love and joy and rescue.

So carefully I place the pillows, knowing that my attempt to trick my body this way, into perceiving a hint of Kevin’s solid warmth, will not really work.  I will flop around, awkward with my arms and legs, until eventually I drift off.  In the thin hours, I will repeatedly open my eyes in the dark–two wide, white, blinking moons, because my body will insist on listening out. It’s wonderful, I know this, to live so closely with another as to feel jagged at the edges when they’re away.

Cether. I say to God, you are my hiding place, my wilderness stronghold, my covert cover.

But does the body believe what the mouth utters in prayer?  Because knowing Kevin hears more than I do from the cover of sleep, that built-in Sabbath surrender, my body abdicates alertness when he’s beside me, trusting him to hear.  There is knowing in the mind, but it seems to me that yada-knowing, that is, experiential intimacy, permeates the subconscious, even the cellular parts of me. This latter kind of knowing my God, of experiencing Him as my hiding place well below the limits of consciousness, is the kind I’m looking for as I pull back the covers now and climb into bed.  I want to practically disappear within Him.

I settle on my back, my head sinking down into a puff of cloud, then think, no, this won’t work, because I never go to sleep this way.  Sabbath must have its rhythms, its well-worn postures, its natural, practical arrangement of thought and body for rest, for trust.  Sabbath rest is a practice, not an event.

Natsar.  You guard me attentively, keeping me from trouble, because I am precious to you.

I am precious to Him.  I pause on this, receiving it.  It isn’t humility to disbelieve those words; it’s calling God a liar.

The last time Kevin traveled overnight I felt, somewhere in the bald, no-nonsense night, the autonomy of my own subconscious awareness.  I was there and also, I was there, my consciousness diving under the cover of sleep, my subconsciousness folding the arms hard and laying rigid on the sheets, blatantly refusing to do anything but keep watch.  Again, I wonder if my body can believe what my mouth prays, because if I can abdicate this watchfulness in favor of Kevin’s, certainly I should be able to abdicate it in favor of God’s.

The last time, in the morning, though considerably less rested than I wanted to be, I could appreciate that my body felt the need to stand in for a trust upon which it could suddenly, albeit temporarily, not depend.  That morning, holding my coffee, I had thought more carefully about passages of scripture—so many, actually, that invite me to trust in God, who never leaves; God, who always keeps watch; God, who provides faithfully; God, who cares for me and sees me; God, who, neither slumbering nor sleeping, holds me close in the night.

I found myself evaluating whether or not I live truly trusting God, or if it is that I am here and also, I am here, a part of me always refusing to rest because somewhere deep I believe it’s always up to me to take care of everything, including myself.  I found this psalm, sitting with God in my wondering, and adopted it as my own psalm of ascent, of rest, a prayer for the night.

You are my hiding place;
    you will protect me from trouble
    and surround me with songs of deliverance.

Cabab, I acknowledge to God at last, you envelop me.  You surround me with love, with joyful cries of rescue.

I flip onto my side, curling fetal in the dark.  Even as I pray, God takes me back to remembering my own rescue, to Him sheltering me, all wounded lamb, and carrying me to freedom.  Prayer is conversation.  I know the joyful cries aren’t mine alone, but also His, especially His.  They are the joyful cries of one who has found a lost love.  This is how He loves me, what it means to Him to be my safety.

My body remembers now, so sweetly, the love-sheltered feeling of curling into Kevin, the every night testimony I receive to the fierce strength of love and union, testifying to an even greater love, an even deeper union, and I begin to drift, a soul afloat, to hear on some Spirit-wind a faint song, growing gently louder.  The melody is suddenly everywhere, the voice, a voice I know, and immediately, I recognize the tune, familiar and sweeping, catching me up, carrying me close as I dip into rest.