What to Do When Worry Won't Let You Sleep

It's 2:13 in the morning. You've checked the time three times. The house is quiet but your head is not. The bill that's due Friday. The thing your boss said in that meeting. The text you sent and the reply that hasn't come. Whatever it is tonight, it has pulled up a chair next to your bed and it is not leaving.

If that's you right now, I want you to know something first: you are not broken for feeling this way. Worry at night isn't a sign that your faith is weak. It's a sign that you're human, that you're carrying something heavy, and that the dark makes heavy things feel heavier. Daytime has distractions. Night has none. So the worry gets the whole room.

There's a story in Mark's Gospel that I come back to on nights like this. Jesus and his friends are crossing the lake after a long day of crowds and teaching. It's evening, and then it's dark, and a storm comes up, the kind that scares fishermen who have seen plenty of storms. Waves are breaking over the side. The boat is filling with water faster than they can bail it. And Jesus is asleep in the back, on a cushion, like none of it is happening.

The disciples wake him with a question that I think a lot of us have prayed without ever saying out loud: "Teacher, don't you care that we are dying?" That's the real prayer under most 2am worry. Not "fix it," exactly. More like: are you even awake? Do you see this?

He gets up. He speaks to the wind and the sea: "Peace! Be still!" And the storm stops. Not slowly. The story says there was a great calm. Then he turns to his friends and asks, gently I think, "Why are you so afraid? How is it that you have no faith?"

Here's what I notice. He didn't scold them for waking him. He didn't tell them the storm wasn't real. The storm was real. The boat really was filling up. What he wanted them to understand was that he was in the boat with them, and the thing threatening them was not bigger than him. The same Jesus who was calm enough to sleep through it was strong enough to end it.

I can't promise your storm ends tonight. Some storms take longer. But the one who was in that boat is in your room too. He is not panicking about your bill. He is not surprised by your diagnosis. He wasn't sleeping because he didn't care. He was resting because he knew exactly who was holding the sea. And you can rest, even a little, for the same reason.

So maybe tonight, instead of trying to solve it all in the dark, just say what they said. "Do you care?" And then listen for the answer that has been true the whole time: yes. More than you know. The waves may still be there in the morning, but you won't be facing them by yourself. Now close your eyes.