Sleeping and I Are at Odds Anymore

Sleeping and I are at odds anymore. While I can string together a few blessed nights of undisturbed, restful nirvana, those God-awful hormones kick in and come three o’clock in the morning, my body makes the executive decision to wake. Well, actually there’s a tag-team going on between the chemical transmitters and my “bladder alarm”. While most things on my body have enlarged with age, it seems my bladder has shrunk. These two impregnable forces revolt against the sanity of slumber, and I, apparently, have no say in the matter. I have tried a number of ways to address this: food, tossing and turning until I wake my husband, watching late-night EWTN, reading… All for naught.

More recently, the thought came to me that although this is a nuisance, maybe I’m being awakened for a reason. I’m feeling very strongly that maybe Jesus is calling me to pray. There is someone, alone in the night, who needs prayer. It’s interesting that since I said yes to Jesus in this call, when I awaken I am instantly aware, and immediately the words are on my lips, “Mercy, Jesus. Mercy.” Through grace that most certainly does not come from me, I am connected with our Church Militant, and cry out on behalf of someone in need, perhaps on their painful deathbed, “Jesus Christ, Son of the living God! Have mercy on me a sinner!”

The diary of St. Faustina: Divine Mercy in My Soul, was honestly the best book I ever read. It impacted me profoundly. Of course it took me about three years to make it through, but, you can’t rush these things. The words that Jesus spoke to St. Faustina could be said to any one of us:

(186) I desire that you know more profoundly the love that burns in My Heart for souls, and you will understand this when you meditate upon My Passion. Call upon My mercy on behalf of sinners: I desire their (93) salvation. When you say this prayer, with a contrite heart and with faith on behalf of some sinner, I will give him the grace of conversion. This is the prayer:

(187) “O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of Mercy for us, I trust in You.”

I find that many times I’m too tired to recite lengthy dissertations on our great need for mercy- but I’m feeling like long-drawn-out speeches are not the thing, especially in the middle of the night. As Jesus said in Matthew 6:7-8: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Oh, I’m a great babbler all right. I can blather on with the best of them, but I sense that no words are sometimes enough. Amazing grace comes, and I simply unite my heart to the Blessed Mother, and she brings my pleading, my begging heart to her son. I see the Blessed Sacrament, and the small flame of that perpetual light shining in the still darkness- waiting, desiring souls so profoundly that His unfathomable mercy gushes forth to save us.

How he wants to save us! And make no mistake, He is calling each one of us to link arms in His great battle for souls. We are all connected. Jesus is calling to you, right now through the words I am typing. The next time that person you haven’t called to mind in ages suddenly pops into your head, or those crazy internal secretions rouse you from a goodnight’s repose: pray. Not big, lengthy words. Just: Jesus, mercy. Oh, the great good that can come from a broken night’s sleep.

Jesus Christ, Son of the living God. Have mercy on me a sinner.