Four Months Out and Sleeping Worse

Erin has her own place now. Second floor, one bedroom, a window that faces a parking lot and a tree. She signed the lease in May.

Everybody was so happy for her. Her sister cried. Two women from church helped her move and one of them said, in the stairwell, with real feeling, "This is the beginning of everything." Her mother, who had said nothing at all for two years, said, "I'm glad."

It is September. She has not slept more than four hours in a row since the third week of June.

She does not know how to say this to anybody, and she has tried twice and both times the conversation went the same way, which is that the person she told got a look on their face and said something like it takes time and then changed the subject, gently, because they had run out.

Here is what her nights are like. She goes to bed at eleven. She lies there and listens to a building she does not know the sounds of. At about two she gets up and checks the door, which is locked, and then she checks it again. She has started keeping the closet light on. On the bad nights she sits on the kitchen floor with her back against the cabinets until it starts getting light, and she could not tell you what she is afraid of, because nothing is going to happen, and she knows nothing is going to happen, and that knowing does not appear to be connected to whatever is doing this.

The worst part is not the nights. The worst part is what the nights have started to mean to her.

Because in the old place, for three years, she slept. Badly, sometimes, but she slept. And a small voice that shows up around three in the morning has begun to say a thing she would never say out loud in daylight: you were calmer in there.

Here is the day it caught.

Her sister, on the phone, cheerful, said, "So how's the new place? Are you loving it?"

And Erin said, "Yeah. It's great."

And then she got off the phone and sat with her hand still on it and thought: I just lied to the person who cried when I got out.

You know that stretch. Out, correctly out, everybody agrees you are out, and the fear arrived afterward like it had been waiting at the door for you, and there is nobody you can tell without their face changing.

What the pillar was for

Let me put down what I am not doing tonight, so you can stop bracing.

I am not going to tell you this stretch is nearly over. I do not know how long it lasts and I will not put a date on it. I am not going to tell you what your body is doing or why, because I am not a doctor and I have never met you. And I am absolutely not going to suggest, in any wording however soft, that being afraid out here means gratitude is missing, or that a person who got out ought to be happier than they currently feel.

What I will do is show you where the pillar of cloud shows up in Exodus, because almost everybody remembers it in the wrong chapter.

And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: he took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.Exodus 13:21-22

Now look at where that sits. Chapter thirteen. Before the sea. Before Pharaoh's chariots. Before the crossing, before the song on the far bank, before any of the famous part.

The pillar was not given for the crossing. It was given for the walking afterward. It shows up at the start of the wilderness and it stays there for forty years, and the text goes out of its way to make a point of the staying: he took not away the pillar.

You have been accompanied in exactly the stretch you assumed you had been left alone in, and the accompaniment was provided for the wilderness rather than for the escape. Exodus 13:22 says the pillar did not depart from before the people, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and onto a kitchen floor at three in the morning.

And notice what the pillar does not do. It does not shorten the road. It does not remove the wilderness. It does not make anybody feel better; there is not one verse anywhere describing Israel as reassured by it. It goes in front, and it stays.

You were never promised that the stretch would be pleasant, and you were promised, in writing, that it would not be walked alone. It is written that the pillar went before them by day and by night, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ancient accompaniment a present one.

The fear is not a verdict on the leaving

Now let me be careful here, because this is where a message like this could hurt somebody.

That voice at three in the morning, the one that says it was calmer in there, is not a message from God and it is not evidence about anybody's decision. It is what a body does when the thing it spent three years bracing against is finally gone and it has not been told yet.

There is nothing spiritual to work out about it. A person who has been holding a door shut for three years does not stop holding it the day the door comes off. The arms keep going. Everyone who has ever come out of anything knows this and almost nobody says it.

You are not being asked to explain your own nervous system before you are allowed to be accompanied, and Scripture never once makes company conditional on composure. Exodus 13:22 has the pillar staying over a people who complain within three chapters, and the Holy Spirit is what makes company independent of a person's state.

And here is the other thing I want to take off you, because I think it is the heavier one. It is not the fear. It is the lying about the fear.

Erin lied to her sister, and she did it out of love and out of exhaustion and out of the completely reasonable knowledge that saying I am worse to somebody who cried when you got out is a hard thing to do to them. But the lying is what makes three in the morning lonely. The fear on its own is survivable. The fear plus the performance is not.

You have permission to be exactly as frightened as you are in front of God, and there is no version of you He is waiting for before He will stay. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes honesty in that direction safe.

And say this now rather than later, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the nights have gone somewhere worse than frightened, or if sitting on that floor has taken you somewhere you would not say out loud, do not do that alone. Tell somebody tomorrow. Your sister, a friend, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. And the sleep is worth mentioning to a doctor plainly, because bodies are physical and this is not only a spiritual matter. That is not me telling you a thing about the apartment. That is me refusing to leave you on that floor by yourself.