And I hung on to that, in those terrible days after the birth of my first son, when my mind was taken by demons and I couldn’t sleep. The gift of a 60th of death eluded me like it never had before, leaving me dry, brittle, shaking. Value is realized in lack.

Whole nights, whole days passing, like a blur, like a blindfold. Begging, beseeching, mouth paper-dry from anxiety, from insomnia, one fueling the other in a vicious, trapping cycle.

It was never a thing. What do you know about breathing? Instinctive, ah. What do you know about sleeping?

I tried for solutions, conventional, holistic, herbal, to little avail. I wailed, I keened. I was desperation itself, falling to my knees, hugging them close and rocking myself. Into my skirt, a prayer. G-d, let me sleep, only You can. G-d!

Eventually, I pulled through. After a million whispered, shouted, trembled prayers, after I’d given up on praying entirely, and I — the ravaged, exhausted husk of a body — became the prayer, He helped and He healed in His way.

I got the gift back, the most overlooked gift, and with it I got my life back. And then, in the way of things in This World that’s designed to distract us, I forgot.

Until months later, on a trip to another place, a new bed, a stiff pillow, I tossed and turned, and the association awakened the lion of fear within me. Fully grown, maned, teeth bared. I hadn’t known it was still there. Such is the fear — a beast unto itself, that keeps me up. I am fine now, fine. No wildly swinging hormones, nothing real. And I sleep.

The problem is gone, but fear remains. And it becomes the problem. Here and there, on dark, dark nights I beg Him for sleep. The most basic, primitive need of all. Take me, take me on a cloud, shut me off to stimuli, let me rest, restore my energies, give me vigor.

I pray from a place of knowing what lack of sleep can do. And that place is so scary that words often fail and I say nothing at all, knowing, in the dark, that’s it’s Him, only He Who can help.

Creak of door.

I squint. Where am I?

A small boy stands on the threshold. Adorable and accusing.

Rosh Hashanah floods back into my consciousness.

Don’t sleep. Do sleep. Please G-d, please, sleep.

I scoop him beside me, and in my bed, in pajamas. I sit there for a moment more before I fumble for footwear and clothes and Tashlich.

We make it so complicated, I think. Adults, with sophisticated minds and a network of feelings and a tangle of associations. Sleep comes instinctively to animals, naturally to babies; it’s the way He made it.

I sigh, deep and long, like a shofar.

I know that when my body rebels and the sleeplessness is beyond me — that’s You.

But when I’m fine and the sleeplessness is my own stuff, my thoughts — it seems to be me, but it’s You, too.

Take me, let me surrender to You. Give me sleep, so that I may have life, the nights for the days.

It’s You, it’s all, all on You.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 860)