insomnia and depression

You've kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book. Psalm 56:8 (The Message)

I have a friend plagued by insomnia, Jehovah-Jireh, Lord of all provision. He's seen all the doctors and had all the tests; nothing is working. The nights stretch out before him and the darkness is heavy in his eyes. His family is discouraged and I know that they feel the fear of the unknown. What can he do but wait?

I don't think the battle belongs to Kevin, Lord. I see him positioned behind you, waiting on and praying for deliverance. There are forces arrayed against him, forces he cannot see and does not understand. You alone know this enemy.

Lead him through the long nights, God. Make your way straight before him. Keep his feet from stumbling, that he may walk before you again in the light of life.

a fractious child prays for mercy

He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. Psalm 33:7 (NIV)

Master and Maker, I am overwhelmed. I am disturbed and unsettled, and I grumble about the shortcomings of everything and everyone around me. I'm tiresome even to myself. My life plays out on a huge stretch of sunny beach, yet I find myself complaining about the cigarette butts tangled in the seawrack or the dearth of perfect shells. How can I stand beneath the scattered blue wavelengths of atmosphere, looking at forty million square miles of ocean, and be irritable at how hard it is to keep my life under control? Somehow I do it. Lord, have mercy on me.

Sometimes I wander out in your universe and believe myself tipped, turned, and stroking into your deep; I fancy myself welcomed by the leviathan, at home among your frightful pressures and ominous mysteries. Most of the time I'm really only in up to my waist, feeling the tidepull, perhaps, but not really risking anything. True, once in a while one of your great creatures of the deep slips into the shallows and makes itself known, but for the most part I don't know that terror. If I am honest I know that to go where they live is to be stripped of the control I so desire. I can't carry anything with me if I am going to swim past the breakers, and I'm definitely a minor player – a silverling at best – in the place where the water turns from gray-green to black. Lord, have mercy on me.

Today I am undecided. Can I be peaceable on the sand? Do I want to venture toward the deep? Safety is like the grave, and my blood urges me to move, but…

Lord, have mercy on me.