Several hours after having my 50th birthday colonoscopy, the hospital called my husband to communicate that they could not wake me up.

He replied, “Wake her up? What are you doing? Let the poor woman sleep. She never sleeps.”

I’m in good company.

According to the National Institute of Health, at least “40 million Americans suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders each year, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems.” Combine these two numbers and I’ve got the companionship of about 20% of the US population.

Maybe it’s a “misery loves company” thing, but I do take some solace when I’m awake at 3:00 AM and I look across the street to see my neighbor’s kitchen light on. We have joked about skyping during those long, dark nights but have never gotten around to it.

I have not slept through the night since I was pregnant with our eldest son, twenty years ago. I am a sensitive soul and having snorting, squirming infants next to me at night for five years interrupted what, had previously been a non-issue.

Then, a year after our youngest was born, a persistent illness morphed into fibromyalgia. Fibro causes pain everywhere, but predominately in the large joints and muscles. If you have ever spent too much time on your feet or pushed yourself while exercising, what you feel the next day is what those of us who have fibro experience 24/7.

I sleep with no less than seven pillows, on top of five layers of foam. (My husband feels like there are two other people in bed with him.) Such strategies have helped, but not solved my sleep issues.

Aside from the incessant low-level fatigue, there are two challenging components of insomnia: how it bends my reality and how powerless I feel. Regarding the former, one writer friend confides, “Insomnia makes me feel crazy. It takes all the things that I ‘know’ as certain, and all the things that ‘work’ to make life bearable and then suddenly I feel like up isn’t up and down isn’t down and truth isn’t truth and that I cannot bear it all.”

If you have ever had just one night of insomnia, and you weren’t high, you get it. When I’ve done everything possible to follow the doctors orders—the deep breathing and relaxation strategies; made the bedroom cool, dark, and media free; exercised; avoided caffeine and TV after dinner—and sleep still evades me, there’s nothing more I can do but wait it out.

I used to get angry. On a regular basis. Most of that anger was directed at God. My night-time tirades followed a predictable pattern. I’d start out meaning well, and in record time end up in tears, demanding, “Why don’t you help me fall asleep? You can do miraculous things. You are all powerful. The Bible tells me that you grant sleep to those you love. So what does that mean for me?” As the questions increased, so did my pulse, which, as you can imagine, did not help the issue at hand.

Since I believe that God does intervene in the world, since I believe that He loves me, and since I was doing everything within my power to solve this problem, I kind of hoped that He would meet me half-way. And He did—but not as I expected.

I rarely fall asleep in less than an hour and most nights I fully wake-up every two to three hours. I can deal with this. What makes me absolutely insane is when I can’t fall asleep until around 4-5:00 AM. This typically happens in spurts. By the fourth night, I am battling some rather large demons. It was in the middle of one of these nights when a question arose from a deep place within my own soul:  “What if, instead of blaming God for this, you simply ask Him to be with you and comfort you?”

The tears betrayed my relief at having another viable option.

After I caught my breath, I thought, “Yea. I can do that.”

Since that night, I have not blamed God for my inability to fall asleep. Yes, I still have to live in the tension of not understanding why He fails to intervene when asked repeatedly. But my friends with cancer have to reckon with that one too.

In fact, to one degree or another, all of us who follow after God have to face the reality that He isn’t a cosmic vending machine. That no matter how virtuous, how faithful, how humble we are, we will still struggle with issues that are spinning out of our control. Unemployment, poorly aging parents, sick children, untenable work or housing situations, insufficient health care. The list goes on.

How we respond to our powerlessness and how we treat others in the midst of it, says a great deal about the state of our souls. Will we lash out and blame, as I did with God? Will we cave in to despair and futility? Will we attempt to control and manipulate situations and people in an effort to alleviate the anxiety that emerges when we really face our limitations? You do not have to battle insomnia to find yourself in this space.

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes, “Our lives are a spectacle of helplessness.” This is not my preference. But as I age, I cannot argue with this reality. My spiritual work is to discern what the helplessness requires of me.

The nights when I am fully awake, though desperately wanting not to be, actually require a level of submission as well as a willingness to fight. I have to push back against the despair and hopelessness that so effortlessly descend upon me. I do this by actively choosing to believe in God’s goodness and faithfulness and speaking it out loud. (Praying the rosary might be an option for those of you who meet Jesus in the Catholic Church.) And after the demons have scattered, I let go and allow myself to simply be, trusting that at some point before the sun rises, I will sleep. Not expecting the worst case scenario knocks down my anxiety a few levels.

If you suffer from insomnia or chronic sleep problems, after you have dismissed the possibility that any health issues might be contributing to it, try this: push back and then submit. Take a moment to pray for yourself and for others who are in their own beds of suffering. Ask God to show them the grace you so desperately need, and then, receive the grace of God and the gift of his presence for yourself. He will come—even when the sleep doesn’t.

Or, you can always skype me.