Afraid

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;

when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

Psalm 17:15

I couldn’t go to sleep the other night.

I had made a big promise to someone I care a lot about and had gotten their hopes up that a big problem they were wrestling with might be taken care of.  I made the promise because I really wanted to help them, but I also wanted, like my dad used to say with a sneer, to look like a big dog.  Now reality had set in and I wasn’t so sure that the promise had been made in a moment of reality.  I was worried not only about how to fulfill the promise, but also the consequences of what fulfilling promise meant to me.  Really, I was concerned what they would think of me if I said that I couldn’t help.

I was afraid.

The only thing I know to do when I can’t go to sleep is take a hot bath, relax in the hot water and air bubbles from the Jacuzzi for 20 minutes or so and then wait for sleep to come, which it usually does.

But not this time.

Hot water ran long enough to warm my hiney and get my legs wet.

Then the water went cold and there I sat.

In some hot water and a bit of cold water.

How fitting.

The hot bath was a dead end.  So the next thing is to go to the study and read what God might have to say to me.

My mind was racing through contingencies.

My soul felt like a drop of water in a hot frying pan.

I read some of my favorite stuff, like God has a good plan for me, one that will prosper me and not harm me.  Another said that he would show me the pathway to life and that there was joy for me in his presence.  I was starting to feel some better.  Then somehow I read that I could be satisfied if every time I woke up, my hero’s face would be the first thing I saw.

Then I thought, you dummy (that’s me), why didn’t you go to your guide and mentor in the first place and ask for the direction you are now getting?  Wouldn’t doing that have avoided most, if not all, of the turmoil?

Well, duh.

Then I went to bed.  I was kind of sleepy.