beginning

At the end of the day, while the lights still twinkle in the living room, I crawl into bed and sigh. Few moments feel as satisfying as this one. If energy sparkles in jars—we have this treasure in jars of clay, I’m still radiant, even if I feel as though I have turned up empty. I have reached the dimming hour, when keenly I feel the clay that makes up the outer edges of me. It feels good to settle myself into softness and warmth, so good I feel a pang of pain at the recognition that some heads lay down against stone and earth, that not every bed feels like mine.

I reach for the book on my nightstand, noting two more gifts in the one moment, whispering my thanks, smiling over Riley’s reluctance–still, as her body wanders into young adulthood–to go to sleep. Just before crawling into bed myself, I had brought her medicine and some water over to her chair, and she feigned a stretch, something she does to buy some time, and then lifted her hands ever-so-slowly, as slowly as she could manage, to take the things I offered her. She resists till the very last second. This has become our nightly ritual, and every time, I chuckle, remembering the way I held her when she was a baby, wrapping my arms around her so that she couldn’t thrash to keep herself awake. She would protest, wriggling, even though her baby eyes drooped as she pressed a soft, flushed cheek against my collar bone. I remember that her flaxen curls felt damp beneath my hand; she had grown sweaty with the effort.

I settle against my pillow now, thinking that if I’m completely honest with myself, I have to admit that I still push things too far sometimes, that I still sometimes struggle to set aside my self-driven stride in favor of rest and reliance. In certain seasons, I still avoid the Sabbath, which might be why God persists in helping me find the holy in seemingly ordinary moments like this one, when I shed the layers of life and once again become only me reliant on Him, as though once again newly born from the spiritual womb. God still holds me close, teaching rebellious me how to rest.

At the end of the day. I turn that phrase in my mind, recognizing that from the beginning the problem is that suggestion that everything ends the moment I lay down to rest. My self-centered perspective orders the day around deceptive productivity, around my awareness, as though reality and order arise from my wakefulness, my energy, my ability to accomplish. Meanwhile, I forget the truth, that God neither slumbers nor sleeps but is always watchful (Psalm 121); that God is always at His work (John 5:17). So sleep becomes an involuntary Sabbath, when I, like the sleeping Abraham, must recognize that I neither enacted nor can keep the covenant I make with God (Genesis 15). While I sleep, finally swaddled in trust, God continues His work, the world turns, and my body heals, all without my awareness or intention. In Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren explores this perspective-shifting idea, pointing out that in ancient times, the Jewish day began while the people slept, and so it began with the work of God and the trust and reliance of His people. In fact, we keep time the same way. Most of us sleep while one day ends and another begins, though we hardly recognize it. Stunned, I wonder what it could mean to crawl into my bed with this acknowledgement, to think of a day beginning beyond my control and attention, while I sleep; to remember that God did all the work of salvation without me, and to celebrate this good news as I set aside my volition. What is this resistance to rest if not a ridiculous rebellion? What if instead, as I surrender to sleep, I think of a new beginning apart from me, of all things beginning with the will and activity and power of God? The smile breaks wide, dawning:

I have to admit, that’s a good way to start a new day. It’s a good way to start a new year, with my cheek pressed against the solid power of God.