Not Four Hours Together Since March

You crossed the landing again at twenty to four.

Third time. You know it was the third time because you counted, and you counted because at some point in the last few months counting became automatic, and now you cannot stop doing it even though the number never helps.

The floor by the door makes a sound and you know exactly where it is and you stepped over it in the dark without thinking, the way a man knows his own house at four in the morning.

And it took eleven minutes, and then you went back and lay down, and you did not go to sleep for a while, because you were listening.

That is the part nobody warns you about. The waking is not the whole cost. The listening afterwards is.

Since March you have not had four hours together. You have worked it out. You have added it up in your head at odd moments, sitting in the car outside work, and the answer is somewhere around five months.

And you are functioning. That is what people say to you and it is true. You are getting through days, you are doing your job, you are having conversations that make sense.

But something has gone thin.

You noticed it on Saturday. Something small went wrong, nothing at all, and you felt a flash of something come up in you that had no business being that size. You did not do anything with it. You breathed and it passed and nobody saw.

And you have been carrying that around since, and what it has turned into is a question about what kind of father you are.

I want to say two things at the start of this one.

The first is that there is nothing in this article about how to make the waking stop. No routine, no schedule, no method, no plan. Not one word of it.

The second is that the flash on Saturday was not information about your character.

In the beginning of the watches

There is an instruction in Lamentations addressed to somebody up in the night with children, and the striking thing is when it tells them to pray.

Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children. (Lamentations 2:19, King James Version)

In the beginning of the watches.

The night was divided into watches, and a watch was a shift. Somebody stood it while everybody else slept. And this instruction does not tell a parent to wait for morning, or to get through the night and pray when they are rested and coherent.

It says: at the start of the shift. In the night. Now, in the state you are actually in.

And look at the manner of it. Pour out thine heart like water. Not compose a prayer, not find words, not be careful. Water poured out is unstructured and it all goes at once and there is nothing dignified about it.

That is what is being asked for from somebody standing in the dark on behalf of their children. Not eloquence. Not calm. Just the whole heart, tipped out, in the middle of the night, in front of God.

So here is what that settles. The version of you that exists at twenty to four, thin, flat, listening at the door, is not a lesser version who should wait until he is more presentable to approach God. That is the exact person the verse is addressed to, at the exact hour, in the exact condition.

You are met at the beginning of the watch and not after it, and the state you are in at four has never once made you less welcome. Lamentations 2:19 sends a parent to pour out their heart in the night rather than in the morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man standing on a dark landing.

Tiredness is not character

Here is the practical half, and it is about Saturday.

What came up in you was a physical event.

A body running five months short does not have the same reserves as a rested one. That is not a moral fact about you, it is a fact about tissue and chemistry, and it is as true of patient people as of impatient ones. The flash was your body reporting on its fuel, and it arrived unbidden, and you did nothing with it.

That last part is the part you have not given yourself any credit for. Something came up and you did not act on it. You breathed, and it passed, and nobody in the house knew it had happened.

That is not the behavior of a man whose character is failing. That is a man running on nothing and still holding the line, and the holding cost you something that nobody saw.

So let me be plain about the accusation you have been carrying since the weekend. Being tired to this degree has not made you a worse father. It has made a tired man do the same job with less to do it with, which is harder and not worse.

And here is the other thing that is true and is not a promise about your nights: this season has an end.

Not a date. I do not know the date and I am not going to invent one. But this particular arrangement, this specific configuration of a small person and a landing and eleven minutes at twenty to four, is temporary in a way almost nothing else in your life is. It ends, and it ends by growing rather than by anything you do.

Being this tired has never once made you a worse parent, and what came up on Saturday was fuel and not character. The written word calls the parent to pour out a whole heart like water without one requirement that it be tidy, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who held the line and told nobody.

Ask one person for one hour

So here is the assignment, and it is not about the baby at all.

Ask one person for one hour this week, out loud, and accept it if it comes.

One person. Somebody who is actually in reach: your mother, a brother, the couple two doors down who have said something vague twice.

One hour. Not a night, not a weekend, not help in general. One specific hour on a specific day, because a vague request is easy to say yes to and impossible to act on, and you have probably already been offered several of those.

Out loud. This is the whole difficulty and I know it.

Because you will not want to. What you want is for somebody to notice and offer properly, and there is a reason you want that: an offer that comes unasked does not cost you anything to receive, and an hour you had to request feels like an admission that you are not managing.

You are not managing. Nobody manages this. That is not an admission, it is a description of a normal person in month five of broken sleep, and the only people who appear to manage it are people with more hands in the house than you have.

And then accept it if it comes. Do not do the thing where you ask and then, when they say yes, immediately make it smaller. Do not say it is fine, honestly, only if it suits. Say thank you, and name the hour, and take it.

And use it to sleep. Not to catch up on anything. Sleep.

You are able to ask out loud for one hour, and needing it has never once been an admission that you are failing. Lamentations 2:19 tells a parent to lift up their hands rather than to manage alone, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man saying a real day and a real hour out loud.