Now I lay me down to sleep..

Psalm 127:2
In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves.




This verse is so true. 
For weeks,I have wanted so badly to sleep with out fear and have sweet sleep. Sleep in general would be really nice. The last couple weeks.. i don't even know how many, my sleep had not been so sweet. Every night I would procrastinate going to sleep because I knew what awaited me when I my eyes shut and I exhaustion would overtake me. 


Dreams. Not pleasant or sweet or delightful, but scary and disturbing and sad. My little brother who is nine gets bad dreams sometimes, and there was a point where I thought, "Oh yeah, he's a little kid, bad dreams happen." But now I've come to wonder if bad dreams ever do go away. Mine have come quite strongly since I've actively pursued God more. 
For the last few weeks, or months maybe, I have woken up at least once if not as many as 3 or 4 times in a night in my mind's effort to escape the terrifying images playing through my head. I would always look over at my clock to see if the night would end soon so that I wouldn't have to risk another set of disturbing dreams. It would usually start around 1am, and then 3 something and 5 something. I would always wake up tired, wishing for more sleep and then dreading what might await me in sleep. 


The more I pursued God, the more disturbing the dreams would be. Often filled with death and gruesome, distorted figures and always filled with fear. 
I have never watched horror movies or extremely violent movies on account of my sensitivity to fearful images and thoughts that don't need to be in my head. 


As a child, I often had night terrors. If that's what you want to call them, anyways. I knew they were direct demonic attacks and they happened when I was awake. There were always loud sounds, I once described the sound to my mom as a giant washing machine making loud noises but I once saw the image of a disturbing figure stirring a large black pot of evil and fear and the sound I heard was the stirring of the pot (If that makes sense). 

As I grew in my knowledge of God and began to claim His love that drives out all fear, the nightmares/terrors began to dissipate and become only a horrible memory. The only times they would return was when I would get sick and have a fever. 


I can't tell you how awful it is. Fear is one of the Devil's worst weapons and I dare say I was quite taken down by his tactics. All the while I kept telling myself it was "Just a little spiritual warfare" or "I'm just not being a good enough Christian." 
Finally, last week, I decided to put an end to it. I attended a Salt Company where the pastor challenged the students by asking them why they are Christian and what evidence do they have they there is a God. I've been challenged to think critically of my faith before, but I was convicted in my thinking that my God would not fight for me in my sleep and that the disturbing dreams would pass with time. 


That night as I did my usual procrastinating of sleeping, I decided to read my Bible and try to find the verse about God giving sleep to those he loved. I figured, if I really believed God loved me, I would have to really believe He would grant me good sleep as well. I knew where to look and found it pretty quickly, but I also came across another passage that encouraged me even more:


When you lie down, you will not be afraid;
   when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. ~Proverbs 3:24


That was just the promise I needed to hear before letting my head hit the pillow and my eyelids shut. After reading that I asked my God to fight for me and to meet me in my dreams and give me sweet sleep. 
And somewhere in my dreams there was a gentle whisper that said, "I love you" and my sleep was indeed sweet and I slept soundly until the morning when Jesus woke me just before my alarm. 


I am quite happy to say that I have slept quite well the last whole week since then as I continue to invite Jesus to fight for me and fearless and sweet sleep. :)