prayer at night

By the time Riley comes to find me for our prayer, I have slid so far down into my pillows as to be almost completely horizontal, and, to be honest, I keep falling asleep, so the book in my hands keeps lightly knocking me in the nose and waking me up.  I have read the same sentence at least a dozen times, even though I’ve only been in the bed about twenty minutes.  It’s as though God just wrapped me up and held me tight from the moment I crawled in, the way I used to have to hold on to Riley as a baby, tucking her little arms beneath my own and holding her so snug she finally gave in to the tired I knew was coming for her. 

The feeling of Riley’s presence, those ocean eyes calmly regarding me, jerks me awake, and I startle and mumble something in a gravelly whisper that sounds unintelligible even to me, something like, “you scared me,” which makes no sense because she looks about as un-scary as a person could ever be, standing there beside my bed in her tie dye pajamas, hands folded in front of her in what I affectionately call her “waiting pose,” her just-washed hair hanging in dark, damp ropes over her ears.  Supposedly, I had been “waiting” for her anyway.

Beside me, Kevin also rouses, though in a much less accusatory way, and, with a quiet sigh, picks up the book that has fallen down onto his chest.

I glance at him and a silent comment passes between us, or more like a silent groan, as I slide my legs out from under the covers and will myself back into an upright position.  Come on, you can do this, I tell myself, but the premise is wrong from the start, and I know it.  The cross was a vertical beam with a cross bar like two wide open arms, and the shape of love looks exactly the same, and sometimes for me, taking up my cross means putting my feet back on the floor, becoming the vertical beam, opening wide my arms, when I don’t possess anymore energy to do it.  All I really know is that I can’t carry off this thing, the cruciform life, the love, without Christ sharing the yoke.  So, a prayer follows on the heels of the lie.  In my heart, I just start saying His Name.  Jesus, precious Jesus.

I walk into Riley’s room and turn on the fan she turned off on her way out just ten seconds ago, so recently the fan blades still slowly turn, and then I turn off one of the lamps she’s just turned on, and I wait while she says her goodnights to Kevin and progresses through the last few rituals that make her feel okay about turning toward her rest.  I’ve come to see that this observance of rituals isn’t really only an Autistic thing.  It’s just a human thing; we comfort ourselves with any sort of repetition that offers us the illusion of control, and we have trouble letting go of that illusion.

I turn in slow circles, like the fan when I walked into the room, because I’m afraid if I sit down or stand in one place for very long, I might drift back off to sleep and suffer another rude awakening.  I keep wondering how I’m actually going to pray out loud because when I’m this far gone, I lose my voice, and, as we have already established, I stop making sense.  Fortunately for me, God already knows what I will say before I try to form the words to say it.  Fortunately, this is about Riley and me turning toward God as we turn toward sleep, about entrusting ourselves to Him, and not about telling God something He doesn’t already know.  I smirk, thinking about this as I wander around Riley’s room, because it seems God needs to make it as obvious as He can for me.  No voice.  No words.  No confidence even in holding myself upright.  I see: I just can’t do any of it without Him.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but over time our bedtime prayer, this turning again toward the Lord, has become primarily about gratitude to God for His grace, and secondarily about making persevering petitions.  If gratitude is the root and grace the nourishing stream, from those our petitions rise up solid and ever-reaching toward heaven, like the slow-growing trunk of a tree just waiting to stretch wide its branches.  So, Riley and I begin by reflecting on the day and saying thank you for as many gifts as I can collect and remember.  On my better nights, I have no trouble mentioning a whole slew of blessings we’ve unwrapped all day, everything from breakfast and clean water to time with cherished friends and the peace of Christ.  I pray thinking about what Jesus said, that He doesn’t give as the world gives, tasting that for its sweetness while I talk to Him.  But most nights aren’t my better nights.

Tonight, I begin as I usually do, “Father, thank you for today and the way you’ve shown us such grace,” and then I pause heavily, because I feel as blank as a bare wall, like Adam must feel when he’s reaching for words.  How have I seen his grace today?  I think that, knowing there’s been something, so many things, because real joy is the recognition of His grace, and it hasn’t been a joyless day.  Has it?

“Ummm,” I say aloud.

I reach for the Holy Spirit, who never fails, remembering a snatch of a passage about how He intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.  Sometimes, I misremember that verse.  I like to think it says when we don’t know what to pray for, as if most of the time I do, as if most nights were my better nights, but in truth, the passage asserts that I pretty much never really do know what to pray.  Even on my better nights, there’s just such a limit to my understanding and my ability to speak in spiritual words.  I think back to Kevin and that silent groan that passed between us, how I didn’t have to explain, how he just knew what I meant to say already, and I relax, because God knows me down to the smallest division of cells and the seeds of my thoughts, beneath any part of me that could ever be seen by any human lens.

“Thank you for the Holy Spirit,” I say aloud now, because Riley lays still and listening, “that He intercedes for me, that it’s okay that I don’t know what to say.”  What a thing He made me say in her hearing, a thing I know she needs.  It’s okay that I don’t know what to say.  If I open my eyes, I know she’ll have her hands folded in prayer posture up by her nose, that she’s at peace, completely engaged in our prayer.  He doesn’t give as the world gives.  “Thank you for your peace, Jesus, for the way you give your peace to us so generously,” I continue.  “Thank you that because of you, Riley and I can finish our day just coming to you.  The only place we ever need to be is right here, Lord.”

Then in my mind, I travel back to the start of the day, the pink streaks in the sky at first light, those sweet early moments in the porch swing where I like to sit with the Lord, further back still, to waking up with my best friend beside me.  The Spirit moves me, and I walk forward through time with Riley beside me, handling all the gifts we gather together, describing them in a rushing, hoarse-voiced whisper.

It’s a matter of Biblical history that God makes covenants with knocked-out, sleeping people who can’t do a single thing to orchestrate their own rescue, and somehow, tonight, the Spirit of God does a work in me while yet I have no voice, no words to say.  Somehow, He uses these careful, prayer moments of gratitude, of waking up to His grace and re-living it all over again, to replace the weary lie that’s lurking in my heart with the fullness of His joy.

So, by the time we say amen and Riley unfolds her hands to intone her own goodnights, I feel entirely satisfied in my soul, though no less physically exhausted, and I leave her room knowing that when I lay down again, I will be able to let go of the day and myself, surrendering to the Sabbath of helpless night from a place of deliberate trust.  In that place of grateful prayer, God has once again answered my haunting question, my “how in the world will I do this tomorrow,” with the certain recognition that He is more than able to carry me.

photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash