In the middle of September, I noticed my sleep had gone strange. I was waking up six, seven, eight times a night, foggy, heavy in my head, knowing I had dreamed something unpleasant without being able to name what it was. I would roll over and go back under, and it would happen again. And again.
At first I didn’t think much of it. One bad night happens. But this wasn’t one night. It was every night, or close to it. Some nights I couldn’t settle at all. Other nights were full of dreams I couldn’t quite grasp, only the weight they left behind.
I did what most of us do. I looked for a normal reason. I blamed what I’d eaten. I blamed menopause. I blamed stress, which, to be fair, I have plenty of. I tried every explanation that let this stay ordinary.
Then in a conversation, while I was describing it out loud, someone asked me a simple question. What was happening in your life when this started?
And I knew immediately. It started the week I claimed the Sanctuary space as God’s. I had done the soft opening of the healing room. I had sat with people in that room and prayed over them. I had done something real in the spirit, and the enemy noticed.
There’s a story that’s been bringing me a lot of comfort lately. In 1 Kings 19, right after Elijah’s greatest spiritual victory, the day he called down fire from heaven and defeated the prophets of Baal, he falls apart. He runs for his life, collapses under a tree, and tells God he wants to die.
And God doesn’t meet him with a command or a rebuke. God sends an angel to wake him gently, twice, and tells him to eat something and go back to sleep. Only after that does God speak to him about what comes next.
That’s not how a king responds to someone falling apart. That’s how a father responds to a child who is exhausted. Rest comes before instruction. Tenderness comes before the plan.
I think about that story often now. “He grants sleep to those he loves,” the Psalmist writes. Sleep isn’t just rest for the body. It’s something God gives, tied to being loved and kept safe.
Sleep is a gift from God. So are dreams. But when we are stretched thin and worn down, there is an opening, and something else can move into it. I believe that’s what happened to me.
So I did the only thing I knew to do. I prayed over my house. I prayed over myself and over my children. I asked for protection over all of us. And I asked for something specific: that I would fight my battles while I was awake, not while I was asleep.
It stopped. I have been sleeping for two weeks now. Really sleeping.
I’m not writing this to tell you your bad sleep is spiritual warfare. Sometimes it’s just stress, or your eating, or your hormones, and that deserves its own attention. But if you’ve been fighting something at night that you can’t name, and nothing ordinary explains it, I want you to know there is another explanation available to you. And there is something you can do about it besides waiting it out.
