Bad Nights

"I want to return to the matter of a previous letter, the temptations of some illnesses, for I think that many may be where I am now. When “something to give you a good night” has failed, and a long string of failures, or what your nurse calls “bad nights,” lie behind, so that you begin to reach the end of your sanguine expectations – then is the time that mental mosquitoes, silly and small, can swarm about you, or something lizard-like crawls and darts. One, the worst of the tribe, changes color as you watch. Nothing is too fantastic for the chameleon.

"There may be no good reason for sleeplessness; the clamors of acute pain have passed. How futile, then, is this way of spending time, a way that will make tomorrow so much harder, so much more ineffective. With that comes the high, thin note of the questing mosquito, teasing the ear. It is a long-drawn Why?

"And then, like tired children, we turn to our Father:

"It is Thy hand that settles
     Tired flowers’ affairs, and piles a starry heap
Of night lights on the jasmine. Touch my petals:
     Put me to sleep.

"And still we do not sleep. Why?

"I have found that in the end that prayer is answered, if not by sleep, then in something even better, the peace that passes all understanding, peace without explanation, peace that can take the edge off the morning’s weariness and make the impossible possible."

- Amy Carmichael, Rose from Brier