Bedtime is not the only darkness our children will face. But God is the same in the dark as he is in the light.

Being a mom often means being up in the middle of the night. If God ordained every minute you spend awake in the nighttime, are these moments gifts of grace?

Those first few months when my son was a newborn were hard. I slept between feedings during the night. I followed the night time cycle mothers know all too well: feed, sleep an hour or two, and feed again. Repeat.

In the morning, I’d calculate in my mind how many total hours of sleep I got from the interrupted sleep I caught in between feedings. ‘Six. That’s not bad. You can make it on six,’ I’d tell myself. Despite my pep talk, I couldn’t make it. I was exhausted.

Over time, I became obsessed with sleep. It was an elusive thing that always moved farther out of my reach. I strategized ways to get more. But even when I did lie down to sleep, the slightest noise would awaken me. Sometimes no matter how tired I was, I couldn’t fall asleep. I told myself, ‘If only I got a solid eight hours. I’d be a happier person. I’d be a better mom.’

You could say I worshipped sleep.

What? Worship sleep? You might think it’s impossible to worship something we need, something that is good for us. In truth, even good things become idols when we turn to them to give us life and hope.

...For moms, the best way to determine if something is an idol is to look at how we handle the daily stresses and pressures of motherhood. Because, to be honest, motherhood is hard and filled with hard and challenging days. There are always interrupted plans, sick children, temper tantrums, overwhelming chaos, and bone-weary days.

...But our God is faithful. He promised to send a Savior and he did. We need to steep our hearts in the Word of God, reading and rereading what God did for us by sending his Son to redeem us from sin. If God rescued us from our worst fear—eternal separation from him—how can he not also deliver us from our current fears?

...Moms, we do need help and hope. Motherhood is challenging and sometimes downright hard. But our help and hope are not found in a change of circumstances, in a pint of ice cream, or in a new parenting method. Our hope is found in Christ, in who he is and what he has done for us. He is our help and our source of life.

Motherhood is an opportunity to come to the end of ourselves every day and run into the arms of a Savior who delights to work through the weak and needy.

I’m sleep deprived. You probably are, too.

I’m sleep deprived because we have a four-year-old son who struggles with sleep due to disability. You might be sleep deprived because of an infant or a toddler or a teenager or hormone problems or anxiety or never-ending piles of work or too many Netflix binges.

...I’ve heard all the admonitions about how we’re not God and how sleeping is recognizing our dependence on him. I couldn’t agree more. I agree with my whole heart, even as I beg God to allow me the privilege of those precious hours of dependence each night. But sometimes he says no to the sleep we long for and he asks us to depend on him in a different way. 

...Ask God to make his fruit overflow at all times and in all circumstances, so that we can say with Paul that we know how to be brought low and how to abound, in little sleep and much, and it’s not by negating all the effects of sleeplessness. It’s by being content in him and slogging through the fog with kindness.