It started like this: Noah doesn’t sleep.

Before he was born, I started praying about the sleeping thing. See I had heard this thing about babies: “The thing about babies is, they don’t sleep.” And I was all, “Nuh-uh, my baby is going to sleep because I don’t function when I don’t sleep and I’m going to pray about it.” So I did, and I got other people to pray about it for me; any time anyone asked me what they could pray for about the new baby, I always said “pray that he sleeps good.” And FYI, if you’re one of those people who likes to tell pregnant women “Get all the sleep you can now cause you won’t be sleeping after the baby comes!” PLEASE STOP. If I had had a sleep bank and I could have stored it up and I could just make a withdrawal after he was born, I would have done that. But is that a real thing? Didn’t think so.

Every night as I lay down after Noah’s late-night feeding, I prayed to (read: begged) the Lord to have mercy on me by letting my son sleep. When I eventually lost faith that Noah could sleep through the night, I started asking God for just four hours. After many nights, I lost faith for four hours and started asking God for just three. It wasn’t working, and I felt angry with God. Angry, and confused. It wasn’t even that He was ignoring my prayers; He was seeming to do the OPPOSITE of what I was asking Him – the harder I prayed, the less Noah slept. It was so simple really, and I know so many other mothers who boast that their child started sleeping through the night much earlier than Noah. All I was asking was for Noah to sleep. What was God doing to me?

With each passing night and still no sleep, anger turned to hopelessness. My prayers were shallow, holding less and less faith. “Let him sleep four hours” became “let him sleep um… as long as possible.” Fatigue, anger, and anxiety accompanied me every night, and I felt like I was reaching the end of my rope as Noah woke up more and more frequently. My faith that God cared for me and my tiny needs was dying. I prayed a different way every night, thinking maybe God was waiting for the perfect word order before He would act. None of my words mattered. I felt like God had turned a deaf ear to my pleas. As my faith waned I started feeling guilty for my prayers; after all, there were many people so much less fortunate than me. Who was I to pray for sleep when thousands of people in Haiti were still suffering? And I didn’t have faith or energy to keep praying prayers that were just bouncing off the ceiling.

So I quit praying about it. And the question started echoing around in my head, burning into my skull: “does prayer even matter? Isn’t God just going to do what God’s going to do regardless of what I ask Him?” My faith that God could “move mountains” or even do ANYTHING about Noah was almost dead. In desperation, I tried shifting my focus, and one night I prayed this instead: “When Noah wakes up tonight, help me discern what he needs, and give me strength to deal with it.” I just knew God would like that prayer. He was sure to answer IT.

Now, a good end to this blog post would be for me to tell you all about how fantastic that night was, that I woke up with energy and had the supernatural ability to deal not only every time Noah woke up, but the next morning, too. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Reader. What actually happened is that at 1:30am, half an hour after I’d fed Noah and put him back to bed and maybe 10 minutes after I’d dozed off, he woke up again, and I flipped my shit. I started crying, sat up and punched the pillow. Lance tried to hug me and I slapped him off me. Then I held out my arms and yelled at the room: “HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP FOR SIX HOURS NOW! WHY CAN’T HE SLEEP FOR SIX HOURS?! WHY!”

Oh yeah. I rock as a mom so far. I think later I’ll smoke a nice big cigarette while I watch my baby play with knives.

The psalmist David, in the midst of all his trials, said “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” I like to think he was like me: reminding his soul what his heart had forgotten. Maybe he, like me, didn’t see the Lord moving the way he wanted. Maybe he, too, was discouraged, losing hope with each new disappointment. But he’s talking to himself, willing himself to be strong, trust in the Lord’s goodness, and wait for God to act.

I hope you aren’t disappointed by this, Reader, but I don’t have the answer yet. I don’t even have a lesson for you to take away from reading this or a great way to wrap it up. I promise to do a follow-up post when I’m the perfect Christian mother with the perfect, sleeping son and a renewed understanding of God’s mysterious ways. The truth is, I’m wrestling in my faith. I’m wondering where God is in this and why He hasn’t acted on my behalf. Something so small, a baby not sleeping at night (which yes, I know, it’s what babies do), is testing me. It’s so much more than Noah not sleeping. It’s about my hope in my First Love. Do I still believe the Lord is good? Do I believe He is kind? Do I believe that he cares about even my smallest needs? This post, y’all, is the essence of my entire blog. After everything I’ve been through on my spiritual journey, I’m still in Kadesh.

I’m trying to do what David said; I’m choosing to look for the Lord’s goodness. I’m trying to be strong, take heart, and wait on the Lord.