I started reading this book called Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren. It’s one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. It begins with a glimpse into the hell she’s walked through. I won’t spoil it because I want you to read it so badly. She shares a moment in her story when things were incredibly grim. Her response to the moment of tragedy was to pray aloud the Prayer of Compline. A prayer uttered by some of the earliest Christians in the night. It’s the prayer of “completion,” the day is done and this act of reverence to Lord symbolizes that. But it’s so much more than that. It targets the wellbeing of those most vulnerable. It speaks to each of us:

Book of Common Prayer

As she describes throughout the first chapter, the terrors of the night have been feared since sin entered the world. Night comes with its own uncertainties. Before modern technology and the ability to call for help with the press of three buttons, the night was a time to dread invasion by enemies, animals coming to wreak havoc on livestock and loved ones, darkness being impenetrable without fire.

Now nighttime still has some of those worries, but for me, night is when the darkness closes in on my mind. I get the most anxious, have the most ptsd flashbacks, and feel the most emotional. I’m tired. My brain is too. I think the enemy strategically chooses these times; he knows our vulnerabilities and presses in. Just like an army invading a land in the middle of the night, knowing the city is vulnerable, without the ability to escape.

When I was in high school I experienced this the most severely. I spent my entire life chronically ill, but it wasn’t until I was eighteen that I felt like my life wasn’t worth living. I had spent the past four years being incredibly sick. I spent everyday begging for healing. Begging God to allow me to eat, drink, and walk without being about to pass out. My heart was constantly tired both physically and emotionally. I spent more time at doctors’ offices, trying new treatments and medications than with friends. I lost my entire high school experience. I’ll never forget laying in my bed with a blood pressure cuff sipping  ginger ale and nibbling on saltines, silently crying as I looked at all of my friends Instagram posts, all dressed up for prom. I could not have felt more isolated, alone, and forgotten.

Nothing got better and no matter how hard I prayed, I just got worse. Every treatment failed. Every doctor stumped.

…

I remember the first time that I realized I had been put on palliative care. I was sitting in my living room looking at my home health nurse and listening to her speak about the patient before me, an old man slowing dying, getting treatment every week in a decrepit old home, and there I was, an eighteen year old recent high school grad with a puke bucket and an IV in her arm. Watching the bag slowly drip into my veins. That was the moment I knew I was actually living in hell. This was actually awful and how could God see this, this girl He apparently loved, and watch her waste away.

I spent every night sobbing into my pillow silently, trying not to wake my family. I would have my headphones in playing worship music, furiously scribbling prayers out onto pages with my weak and trembling hands, and my Bible open to the Psalms or Job. Every. Single. Night. “Rescue” by Lauren Daigle was my anthem. It was my comfort. My prayer. My hope. I begged my Rescuer to come and save me; that I would either wake up healed, or He would call me home. But every day that He did neither, I grew increasingly more angry. The darkness started to make its way even more into that tiny room of mine, and I started to believe that He wasn’t kind. He wasn’t just. He wasn’t caring.

It was those thoughts that were so carefully crafted and launched like missiles into my soul, that tore me down. They convinced me that I should just end it all myself. It was in the night, darkness surrounding the walls outside of my house, but even darker inside that room where I was grasping for a reason to keep going.

I’m still here. There’s more to that story that I’ll share one day. The battle that I faced every night in that room was hell, but I’m still here. Still fighting the battles that war in the night. But I’m here now, knowing now that the sun still rises. Darkness still comes, and it’s still incredibly powerful, but those nights as a teenager, begging for healing and seeing so many years later that I’m better, still sick, but better, is the dash of hope I hold onto with every bit of grip strength I have in the hands that are still weak and trembling.

Maybe your story is similar. Maybe you too are still walking the road of suffering. We don’t have the great victory or miraculous healing to share but the fact that we’re still here is honestly a miracle in and of itself. I had every reason to leave, but it was that incredibly microscopic dot of hope that I had, that kept me here. If you’re in that place now, please hold on to that small dot of light that you can see far off in the darkness. It may be so small you question its existence all together, but what if it’s actually there? What if in 8 years you can walk to the bathroom without passing out? What if you can eat again? What if it isn’t this bad forever? Maybe.

Hold tight to the maybe. Please. Even if your hands are trembling. Hold on.

Much love,

Holly