Nate and I had the luxury of sleeping in a king size bed for four years. As all sixty-somethings age, we appreciate a good night’s sleep more and more, because it’s harder and harder to get.

Our king, purchased to celebrate our 60^th birthdays, used to be in a downstairs bedroom and was available to more than just Nate and I. Volumes of girl-talk happened on that bed, as well as lounging amongst the giant pillows while watching TV. Sick kids spent their day in it, and Louisa slept there for a week after her painful tonsillectomy. Friends of our kids claimed it was “the world’s most comfy bed.”

Yesterday it got dismantled and moved from our cottage bedroom to the room next door, an Army-style barrack-bedroom decorated, coincidently, in olive drab. Beds fill the floor space for group sleeping when crowds come to town, and the addition of a California king will mean sleeping three more when everyone’s here.

Since Nate died, the big bed has been sleeping only one, and the mattress is beginning to have a Margaret-shaped divot in it.

So Klaus hauled our old double bed up from the basement, and I dug out the well-worn sheets. Once it was set up where the king had been, it seemed small in the room and shouted “Set-back!”

So last night at bedtime, always the low moment of every day, I had a conversation with myself. “If only I didn’t need sleep and could stay up though every night. Better yet, if only night wouldn’t come at all and the sun would never set…”

Today God comforted me with some fresh thoughts: I can look forward to that wish coming true one day, because Scripture describes heaven as having no night and says the Lord will be our light. That means Nate isn’t using a bed in his new home and doesn’t miss either our king size or the double. He gets to stay awake “around the clock” and never has to face a lonely night. All of that was good news to me today.

I’m still bound by day and night, work and sleep. But after I die, as Nate did, after all of us die, we’ll be free of this cycle, one of unnumbered heavenly blessings. Nate didn’t sleep well most nights, although it might have been those 30 cups of coffee he consumed each day. The fact that he’ll never face another night of tossing and turning is a great blessing for him.

But for the rest of us, night time can be riddled with problems: difficulty getting to sleep or staying that way, nightmares, fear of noises or break-ins, feelings of vulnerability and the chronic dilemma of every daytime predicament seeming greater during the night. When nighttime disappears, so will these problems.

I still dread nighttime, but the old double bed gave me a pretty good night’s sleep. And because Nate and I slept in it for 36 years, it felt familiar, like spending the night with an old friend again.

“Night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light.” (Revelation 22:5)